In Peddie in the Eastern Cape, children are eating wild plants to
survive, as the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown take their toll. The
number of households going hungry has doubled, according to new
research.
Gift of the Givers project manager Ali Sablay told Groundup that when
the organisation’s food truck arrived in Wesley, Peddie, last week,
people started dancing and singing.
Until then, only 25 food parcels had
been handed out in the area since the beginning of the lockdown, Sablay
said. He said some people in Peddie were eating wild plants to deal
with their gnawing hunger pangs.
Job losses had spread hunger into new areas in cities, Sooliman said.
Calls from people in need were coming from people employed in industries
in distress, particularly the aviation, restaurant and hotel sectors.
Before the lockdown, three-quarters of households which received
social grants relied on income sources other than grants, they said,
which could explain why hunger had worsened though grants had not
changed or had even increased. “Pandemic-induced job losses present a
major threat to the livelihoods of a large proportion of grant receiving
households precisely because earnings has been an important source of
income for most grant-receiving households.”
However, about 30% of those
who had lost their jobs between February and April reported no
household grant income at all.
One in three of those who earned an income in February did not earn
an income in April, the researchers found, and job losses were
concentrated among women and lower-paid workers.
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