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news • business • opinion • sport Thursday, May 16, 2024
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Food bank funding to end By Paul Charman
Families may go hungry following the announcement this week the Ministry of Social Development funding for food parcels finishes in six weeks. “It’s going to be devastating actually,” Ōtorohanga Support House manager Dot Ngarotata said. “We’ve been told that from next term the Government will be taking all the funding and putting it into (creating) employment, with the rationale being that if people have jobs they can buy their own food. “That’s great if you live in an area that has jobs, but our community, especially Ōtorohanga, is very much a farming district and our township doesn’t have a big capacity at all to offer employment.” Foodbanks in Ōtorohanga and Te Kūiti have been feeding more than 200 people a month, with the bulk of their supplies paid for by the ministry since 2020. “I’m not blaming MSD for the changes, because they are following a Government directive,” Ngarotata said. “Now, without this support we will be more dependent than ever upon the compassion and caring attitude of people in the community. “We wouldn’t be able to manage without the support of people who bring in veggies from their gardens; farmers who donate meat and families who will come in to donate like a box of canned fruit. Without that sort of stuff we could not run this service – we don’t have any other options.” News of the funding cut did not come as a complete surprise to Te Kūiti Korowai Aroha Charitable Trust chair Antonio (Shane) MangioniAshby. He and his trust board had been looking for ways of making their service more sustainable following a reduction in the funding several months ago. “The needs (for food) have not fallen away – it is now related to the cost of living.” Ashby said a significant number of Te Kūiti residents were not working, or on very limited hours, such as at one of the freezing works. The food parcels were designed to help out a person who was short this week to get through,
Ashby said. They were not intended as social welfare, and if people were constantly running out of food, the foodbank could only refer them to Work and Income. Journey Church pastor Terry Bradley said the Te Kūiti Food Bank had already been tightening up on what it could provide. “The cost of living is really high . . . we can’t be expected to bridge the gap, not when the pot to enable us to do so has been diminishing and now will disappear altogether.” Te Kūiti Korowai Aroha Charitable Trust sent out between 45 and 50 food parcels in the last month. These range in size with some feeding as few as about two adults and three children, while others may feed
as many as five children and five adults. They feed 80 to 109 people a month. The Ōtorohanga Support House distribute between 80 and 104 food parcels per month. These may feed anywhere from about 238 to 348 people depending on family size. The Te Kūiti Food Bank, based at Journey Church, sent out 53 food parcels in April. Their food parcels feed from one to five or more people, but the number of recipients is not recorded.
Korowai Trust chair Shane Mangioni-Ashby and shop manager Mihi Hete in the organisation’s food bank storeroom.
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