The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Many people leaving in urban areas are resorting to unsafe food consumption as recommended foods are becoming too expensive for them.
Agnes Kirabo, the Executive Director of a local NGO Food Rights Alliance has revealed.
She says that policymakers should be thinking about how to tackle food insecurity in urban areas.
Kirabo says while all efforts by donors and government have been directed to people dying of hunger in rural areas, those in the city are hit hard because they exclusively depend on the market for their food needs.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) statistics show that 10% of Ugandan households are ‘food stressed’ meaning that they struggle to find daily food that sometimes they skip meals or depend on really unsafe foods.
The statistics indicate that 1% are food insecure and 89% are secure. She now says if urban hunger is to be dealt with, there should be provisions in urban planning policies that call for one to have a small garden that can at least give them a plate of vegetables.
Currently food safety is only thought about when there’s an outbreak like cholera yet other critical adulterations that happen daily like the allegations of supermarkets changing or erasing completely expiry dates for food and using the same cooking oil to fry snacks over and over again are ignored.
This year’s World Food Day was marked under the theme Our Actions, Our future.
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