The Algarve Food Bank is headed for a “perfect storm” as it registers a decline in its ability to respond to a growing number of requests for support from people and institutions, the president warned on Monday.
Speaking to Lusa, Nuno Cabrita Alves described the situation of Banco Alimentar do Algarve as “disturbing”warning of the growth in the number of requests for support from institutions that have seen their response capacity exhausted and turn to the Food Bank to continue supporting users.
EITHER the number of requests for individual support is also increasingwhich is currently supported by approximately 27,000 people (5,000 of which through a European Food Programme), and is “expected” to continue to grow as tourism in the Algarve enters the low season and more people lose their jobs, he added.
Requests for support in the Algarve increase with the end of the summer, but the “shock” will come later
Simultaneously, the energy crisis and fuel prices It is preventing the Food Bank from contracting or transporting merchandise, reducing its daily food collection capacity and making the food baskets “less complete”, warned Nuno Cabrita Alves.
At the moment I think we are headed for the perfect storm,” warned the president of the institution, warning of the “worrying” situation that lies ahead.
“In the last year, the The number of institutions that have joined the Food Bank has been increasing“, he said, adding that they are currently 136increase motivated by “years of demand for response” that left them without their own resources, in the face of state support that was not “conveniently updated” and “is not enough.”
Added to this “first sign of concern” is another that, according to Nuno Cabrita Alves, “has to do directly with the people”, after, in recent weeks, “the request for help from the families who come to food. Bank”.
Measures that have been announced to support families
The same source expects these requests for support grow “even more at the end of this month of September and at the beginning of October, with the end of tourist activity in the region”, which now sees the end of the high season.
The “increase in the basket has been brutal” and the “costs of food have been enormous”, while “the answers given by the State are mere palliatives and do not respond structurally to the questioning raised and the challenge raised to all” with the worsening of the economic situation, he considered.
Nuno Cabrita Alves justified the “decrease” in the response with the increase in fuel, which was quantified by more than 300%, from 2020 to 2022, and with the stop of the refrigerated vans that “every day go out to promote the collection of food in various areas”. Locations, including supermarkets”.
Gasoline sold 3.3 cents above benchmark and diesel sold 3.7 cents below.
“Of the two of us, either we continue to have the financial capacity to keep these cars running or else we will have to choose to cut this serviceAnd That Means less than 800 tons per year. And 800 tons are very significant for the work we do annually”, he exemplified.
The president of the Food Bank of the Algarve regretted the lack of support from the State to the Food Banks in the cost of fuel and he also gave the example of freight transport, which had an impact “on the budget of 150% in the last year.”
This also means that, by not having the financial capacity, trucks are not hired to recover food from certain types of partners, and each truck that does not arrive in the Algarve is 22 tons less of product that there is not to distribute”, he concluded. .
In the last year, Banco Alimentar do Algarve distributed 3,800 of food products in the region.
Source: Observadora
