Author: Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)
There’s a worldwide consensus that after many years of stability, world food prices have jumped 85% since 2005 and Croatia is not excluded from this formula. The alarming levels of unemployment due to eroded manufacturing industry, production – closure of production plants and widespread corruption in the privatisation of manufacturing firms – have long ago prompted many a warning of a looming purchase power crisis in Croatia that could only lead to poverty and hunger.
At the end of the food chain comes the real crunch: among the poor, particularly the urban poor as people living in towns and cities cannot grow and produce food, those most likely to go hungry are children. If young children remain malnourished for more than two years, the consequence is stunted growth – and stunted growth is not merely a physical condition. Stunted people are not just shorter than they would have been; their mental potential is impaired as well. Stunted growth is irreversible. ‘Chronic hunger deprives children of the essential proteins, micronutrients and fatty acids they need to grow adequately. Globally, it is estimated that nearly 226 million children are stunted – shorter than they should be. In addition, stunted children score significantly lower on intelligence tests than do normal children.’ https://www.freedomfromhunger.org/world-hunger-facts
UNICEF’s 2014 report ‘Children of Recession‘ had placed Croatia’s levels of children living in poverty and at the brink of poverty at alarming levels. ‘Soup kitchens’, ‘social shops’ – that give away donated non-perishable food and personal and other hygiene goods to the poor – and countless charitable efforts to feed the poor (in addition to the government’s social welfare programs) have become a way of life for many in many parts of Croatia.
Despite such an alarming situation with poverty and hunger the Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic had, soon after the release of the said UNICEF Report, branded the reports of hunger in Croatia as populist and simply denied any truth to the reports of hungry children in Croatia!
In November 2014 Mladen Levak, member of Croatian parliament for Labour party, addressed in parliament regarding the UNICEF report of 60 000 children living in poverty and asked the government whether the state would pay for meals in schools for poor children … Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic got to his feet quickly and replied: ‘…That is populism. Let’s not be populists and say that today people live hungry in Croatia. The problem is bigger, people in Croatia eat, there’s more food than ever but the question is in food quality, quality food costs more. There’s lots of food that is cheap, which is not directly damaging but in long term it is damaging. And those are the habits we need to start changing slowly…if someone truly hasn’t the resources for food then the state is there to help them, if someone is truly hungry…that’s not the problem in Croatia, the problem is the abundance of bad food … schools are important in this …’ Equally swiftly, Mladen Levak presented his rebuttal to the Prime Minister’s claims and said that such an opinion is Prime Minister’s but that the Prime Minister does not read the daily press to discover such cases of hunger; that there is food in abundance, indeed, in Croatia, but not with those who cannot obtain it due to poverty. ‘There are funds to fix that by stopping excessive spending in parks or ministerial office décor, spending excessively in various parties and ceremonies ….yes there is food but not for all – for some opportunities pile up while for others poverty piles up,’ insisted Levak in the Croatian parliament.
Datum objave: 10.03.2015.
