Displaying items by tag: poverty

Thursday, 28 April 2022 23:31

Kenya: another tragedy - armyworms

Kenya is in a world of hurt. Joy Mueller of Kenya Hope says, ‘They look at having no food to feed their families and no money to pay school fees or buy the things they need. For the third year in a row, these poor people are just devastated. First, the pandemic locked everything down, so rural Kenyans couldn’t buy supplies or sell their livestock at the market. Then right on the heels of the pandemic, they got hit with a severe drought. All the water sources dried up; pastureland was gone and animals were dying. For the people here, their animals are their bank accounts. 2022 seemed to be the start of something better when they got some beautiful rain in February. Hope sprang again, but then they were hit by African armyworms. They’re called armyworms because they march across the field eating every green thing in their path.’

Published in Worldwide
Thursday, 24 March 2022 21:29

Spring statement as cost of living soars

Rishi Sunak delivered his mini-Budget against a backdrop of rising fuel, energy and food costs. He cut fuel duty by 5p but resisted calls to scrap April's National Insurance rise of 1.25p in the pound; instead the start threshold will rise from £9,600 to £12,570. He warned the UK's post-pandemic recovery has been blown off course by the war in Ukraine, but he promised an income tax cut in 2024 when the economy would be in better shape. The Office for Budget Responsibility painted a bleak picture of the immediate prospects, saying that living standards are set to take the biggest hit since records began in the 1950s. It said inflation was set to peak at 8.7% at the end of this year and this - combined with rising taxes - will ‘weigh heavily on living standards in the coming twelve months’. The UK's tax burden will be the highest level since the 1940s.

Published in British Isles
Thursday, 24 March 2022 21:25

Loan sharks and cost of living crisis

Price increases are making it tougher for households to make ends meet, and unlicensed lenders offer loans to the desperate at astronomical interest rates. Last year the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) researched 3,363 people. One in forty were borrowing from unlicensed lenders. CSJ thinks there are about a million people in England doing this. ‘Overwhelmingly, people borrow when they're desperate. For everyday costs of living, like a gas or electricity bill, or a pram, and then they get exploited by those seeking to extort them for as much money as they can get out of them, offering arbitrary terms, little to no paperwork and an extortionate repayment rate.’ ‘It's just endless,’ one victim said: 'I went from a £150 loan to owing £6,000 in months'. The CSJ report highlights separate data from 1,252 victims, questioned last year by the Illegal Money Lending Team, which prosecutes loan sharks in England. The figures suggest the borrowers are among the poorest in society.

Published in British Isles
Thursday, 24 March 2022 21:22

CAP: Government must act

Christians Against Poverty (CAP) is a Christian debt help charity which is calling on the Government to 'act now' and increase support for those on low incomes with everything at its disposal. They saw calls to their debt helpline rise by 47% this January compared to last year, and requests for emergency fuel vouchers have doubled. CAP said, ‘We, along with many other charities and think-tanks, say that the upgrading of Social Security (the amount benefits and pensions go up in April) needs to be more than planned. Also they could pause deductions to Universal Credit as they did at the beginning of the pandemic. The third thing needed is a cost of living review; the level of social security has not matched the actual cost of living, even for the barest of essentials, for many, many years.’

Published in British Isles
Thursday, 17 March 2022 21:43

Northern Ireland poverty

A Joseph Rowntree Foundation report published on 16 March tells us that as Northern Ireland entered the pandemic, nearly one in five people lived in poverty, including over 100,000 children. 1 in 14 households are in food insecurity, and the recent spike in energy prices, and wider inflation. People in workless families, disabled people, carers, and people in ethnic minority households have much higher poverty rates. So people across Northern Ireland need the new Executive to focus on whether to reverse or partly mitigate the impact of the £20 per week cut to the basic rates of Universal Credit. It could also match benefit up-rating more effectively to the cost of living. A targeted payment, such as the Scottish child payment, would reduce child poverty. The Executive could also consider the role that DLA/PIP can have in helping disabled people into the labour market, including considering how the administration of payments could be redesigned with dignity and poverty reduction at their heart.

Published in British Isles

The South Africa Council of Churches (SACC) has launched a national indaba (conference with indigenous tribes) to engage interested parties to find solutions to tensions over foreigners living and working in South Africa. Bishop Mpumlwana said they must create ‘a national process towards a stable national environment where the growing lawlessness over non-South Africans can be addressed before it spills into a broader decline of the rule of law, through “justifiable” acts of public frustration.’ He said that deep poverty gnawing at the lives of the economically excluded majority of South Africans is behind murmurings that ‘non-South Africans are stealing our jobs’ and sporadic acts of brutal violence against foreigners. ‘It is a manifestation of the failure of democratic South Africa to achieve the promise of the post-apartheid South Africa. The failure to achieve this causes a mentality that grips poor communities without hope’. he added.

Published in Worldwide
Thursday, 03 March 2022 21:59

Afghanistan: extreme poverty and hunger

Extreme hunger is causing parents to sell their kidneys to feed their children. Illegal organ trading existed before the Taliban takeover, but the black market exploded when millions more were plunged into poverty after international sanctions. Currently the UN estimates that 24 million people, 59% of the population, are in need of lifesaving humanitarian aid. ‘I had to do it (sell a kidney) for the sake of my children,’ said 32-year-old Nooruddin, ‘I didn’t have any other option. I regret it now.’ He was speaking outside his home, where clothes hang from a tree and a plastic sheet is a window pane. ‘I can no longer work. I’m in pain and I cannot lift anything heavy.’ The practice is so widespread where Nooruddin lives, that it is nicknamed ‘one kidney village’. Children desperately search through litter for food waste, and shops are closed. People have no money to buy things. Mother-of-three Aziza said, ‘If I don’t sell my kidney, I will be forced to sell my one-year-old daughter.’

Published in Worldwide

Michael Gove admitted that people in some areas have been ‘overlooked and undervalued’ by Westminster for years. Truro Foodbank is in one of the poorest UK areas; its manager said levelling up won't be effective unless low wages are addressed. Many in Cornwall are not on a national pay structure, so have 23% less pay. They have higher water bills because of the coastal areas and now there are rising utility bills. He said, ‘Financial pressure comes from how much your income is, and what you've got to pay out. 66% of the people receiving foodbank parcels are on low incomes. Levelling up will see 5G mobile data coverage for the “large majority” of households. But this will mean little to struggling households. There’s an expectation that everyone has a smartphone. Those who haven’t are disadvantaged because they can't even make an application for help in the first place.’

Published in British Isles
Wednesday, 15 December 2021 20:48

Lebanon: elderly in hardship and helpless

11% of Lebanon’s population is over the retirement age (65), and 80% of retired people have no health care coverage. Previously Habeeb and Elham had a good life; they could eat meat, afford medicine and have the lights on. But those times are over. When Habeeb retired their income stopped and now the 80-year-olds face poverty and uncertainty. ‘There is no government pension when you are old, no one is helping. How can we pay our bills?’ asks Habeeb with tears in his eyes. Lebanon has one of the world's worst economic crises. The Lebanese pound has lost 90% of its value since 2019. The banking system crumbled with much of the elderly’s life savings. The young are abandoning Lebanon in search of a more dignified life. Lebanese lack electricity and water, and food and medicine are difficult to import. The aid group Medonations imports medication and provides it to those who need it, and there are a few relief outlets for the vulnerable.

Published in Worldwide
Thursday, 21 October 2021 21:09

Syria: poverty, but God is working

After a decade of civil war, Syria has at last begun to reconnect with its neighbouring countries, including Lebanon, Jordan, and the UAE. President Assad’s grip on the country is tenuous as areas near the Turkish and Iraqi borders are controlled by rebel groups. Fighting has left Syria in economic ruins; families which used to have more than enough income to provide for themselves are now in poverty because of hyperinflation. A man with cancer did not continue with expensive treatment; it was better that one dies rather than all of them dying. Families without enough food for all their children give lunch to some children lunch and dinner to the others. But God is working. The story of Jesus is reaching new populations; there is a budding movement of the Holy Spirit and churches are forming among the Druze in the south and the Kurds in the north.

Published in Worldwide