Standing in line at the food bank to pick up a food package is bad enough for people. It is even worse if the package is handed over by your neighbor, who is a volunteer at the food bank, finds 50PLUS in Assen. The party calls the current issuing system ‘far from humane, an invasion of your privacy and therefore out of date’.
Group chairman Clemens Otto therefore seriously questioned during the budget discussion today whether Assen could not follow the example of Rotterdam. There they are experimenting with a ‘food debit card’. With this, people living in poverty can do their shopping in the supermarket with a weekly credit on a debit card. Then they don’t have to go to the food bank, of which people are often ashamed.
“With this pass system, with which no smoking and alcohol can be bought, privacy and freedom of choice are guaranteed. People can buy what they want themselves, instead of that well-known pack of macaroni. Is such a pass with a credit not a better form, which is more appropriate for today’s time”, Otto of 50PLUS wonders.
The party also points to the supply of fewer and fewer products to the food bank, while demand is increasing. “The food bank currently feeds about 700 mouths, and that number could even double with current price inflation and energy costs. It is an illusion that the pressure on food banks will decrease in the future,” warns Otto.
That is why 50PLUS wants to investigate whether the current distribution system at the food bank cannot be reformed, the party argues in a proposal in the city council. The subsidy that is now put into the food bank every year, and the costs that the organization has to pay for the rent of a building and energy costs, could then be earmarked for this.
Alderman Cor Staal (ChristenUnie), who deals with poverty alleviation, said he would be interested in following various trials in the country with card systems, such as the experiment in Rotterdam. “But these trials are still ongoing, we are curious about the findings.”
Staal immediately added that the municipality has in principle nothing to say about the distribution system of food parcels at the Asser food bank. “The food bank is an initiative set up by society. We as a municipality subsidize, but do not determine the implementation. They are autonomous in this.”