Govt. aims foster parents system for 40,000 children facing malnutrition
COLOMBO – Sri Lanka will start a foster parent concept to feed nearly 40,000 malnourished kids from December, Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella said, as thousands of children are compelled to miss out on meals due to economic hardships with the island nation’s unprecedented financial crisis.
“We have got the money now and we will start in two weeks once we finalize the modalities on the implementation at the grassroots,” Rambukwella said, explaining that the government has allocated 500 million rupees for the project and the ministry has got 1 billion rupees each from private sector firms. He was referring to one local and an Indian firm that have come forward to assist the program.
An estimated 6.3 million people in Sri Lanka are facing moderate to severe acute food insecurity and their situation is expected to worsen if adequate life-saving assistance and livelihood support is not provided, a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) warned in September.
A UNICEF report in September showed that over 5.7 million people, including 2.3 million children, require humanitarian assistance in Sri Lanka, making it among the top ten countries with the highest number of malnourished children with the numbers expected to rise further.
Health Minister Rambukwella has been in the process of raising funds for the foster parent scheme as the crisis-hit Sri Lankan government lacks funds for free food for the poor children.
The government has long said it will start mid-day meals for school children, but is yet to initiate any such program at the national level.
Local media have reported a number of incidents where some malnourished children have stopped attending schools due to lack of food.
-economynext.com
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