December 09, 2019
Poverty activists bag food experiment
Auckland Action Against Poverty says the government should experiment with what beneficiaries eat.
Some Auckland beneficiaries in being delivered My Food Bag – a food delivery service typically priced between $200 to $300 a week.
Auckland Action spokesperson Ricardo Menendez says if people can't afford healthy kai, the answer is to lift benefit levels.
"We're not really fixing the core issues which are house prices, rent prices, accessibility of health kai more in general, just the fact that for a lot of low income neighbourhoods, access to fresh produce is an issue and so I think we should look at those things rather than offload the provision of welfare to a private company which is what they are doing with My Food bag," he says.
The Ministry of Social Development says the feedback to the experiment has mostly been positive.
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