70,000 people at food risk in Uruguay: MIDES only distributes 10,000 dishes a day

2023-08-28 14:31:47

MIDES distributes food in sachets.

Uruguay currently has some 70,000 people in a situation of food risk but the Ministry of Social Development (MIDES) only plans to distribute about 10,000 plates of food a day, according to the former director of Evaluation and Monitoring of MIDES, Juan Pablo Labat, in a recent interview. in M24.

According to the official, “there is nothing that explains, for example, such a big mistake in the matter of feeding the population as the lack of correct diagnosis about the food problem, which derives from a short, myopic and self-indulgent vision”.

“The worst thing that can happen to a Mides is to have a self-satisfied vision of what is being done in terms of food, (…) of what was done and what is planned to be done”, such as “this example of the Territorial Food Program ( PAT),” he added.

For Labat, the inherent right of human beings to feed themselves must be demarcated: “let us not forget that In Uruguay we have a lot of people who don’t eat every dayand it has to be a fundamental slogan of politics, forbidden not to have it: eat every day”.

Barely 10,000 plates of food a day

Labat, who is also a sociologist, pointed out against the frozen food program that consists of food sachets that are delivered to low-income people: “the meager and measly goals of distributing 10,000 meals a dayand that it is also the result of a diagnostic error, but in addition to brutal blindness, ”he snapped.

“The only study that Mides had done in these two and a half years was to include food dissatisfaction in the INE survey; and it turns out that the survey showed Mides that in Montevideo and the metropolitan area, where the PAT is directed, there are 70,000 compatriots with severe food insecurity”, he continued.

He concluded by saying that MIDES is following a political plan more than one in favor of the most needy: “This clearly shows that, beyond the fact that there is no diagnosis, when there is a hint of a diagnosis, reading is politically expedient for budgetary and adjustment objectivesand not a reading inspired by the situation of the population”.