Some are scavenging for
edible weeds to eat.
It is happening at the
Kwaluseni township, according to a Swaziland newspaper.
Local member of the House
of Assembly Sibusiso Mabhanisi
Dlamini called on the Prime Minister Ambrose Dlamini to act urgently.
The eSwatini
News (part of the Times of
Swaziland) reported, ‘The residents feel that COVID-19 [coronavirus] has
reduced them to mere scavengers forced them to either fight or succumb to
imminent death from hunger.’
It added, ‘At worst,
residents say hunger is exacerbating sickness and disease and threatens to
plunge the community back to its shameful era of being the national hotspot for
violent crime.’
Many of the residents work
in Taiwanese-owned textile factories in nearby Matsapha. Others are vendors who
work for themselves, others are maids. All have lost their jobs and have no
money.
Hlengiwe Hlatshwako, who
earned a living by moving from place to place and doing laundry for people,
told the News, ‘Now that we have been warned to stay at home, I do not
have any source of income and this is worrying me because I have five children
whose father has also been told to stay at home. How do we stay indoors with no
food to eat? We will die of starvation.’
Sibusiso Mabhanisi Dlamini
said he had already sent messages for help to the prime minister and his
deputy.
He said, ‘People were
calling me every now and then asking for food. Some were so desperate that they
said even if I gave them mealie-meal, they would gladly eat it with water than
to struggle under severe hunger.’
Hunger is widespread across
Swaziland. This week the African
Press Agency reported more than
11,000 vulnerable children were without food because 650 soup kitchens at
neighbourhood care points had closed because of the coronavirus crisis.
The children previously received
two meals a day provided by the Swazi government through the assistance of
international donors.
It quoted an anonymous
official from the Deputy Prime Minister’s office saying, ‘The situation has
been worsened by the fact that schools are also closed yet most of the children
would not receive free lunch from schools under the schools feeding scheme.’
Even before the coronavirus
outbreak hunger was widespread across Swaziland. About 232,000
people (25 percent of the rural population) were expected to experience severe
acute food insecurity, according
to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
In November 2019, it was reported in the Times of
eSwatini that five
elderly women in the Nsalitje area had starved to death and many more were said
to be quietly being killed by hunger. A continuing draught and restrictions on
importing cheap mealie maize from neighbouring South Africa were blamed.
See also
World
Food Program falls short in fundraising as hunger grips Swaziland and King
spends lavishly on himself
https://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2019/07/world-food-program-falls-short-in.html
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