Minister of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs Kirk Humphrey has dismissed critics of Government’s Summer Nutrition (SuN) programme, saying there should be no shame in children coming forward to accept the meals if their families are poor and unable to adequately afford nutritious meals during this summer.
In fact, Humphrey, who said he grew up in The Pine, St Michael, argued that most Barbadians were “born poor” and are descendants of slaves who started with nothing.
“I have to contain myself, because I listen to people talking about not giving people children school meals because it is going to make them look poor. But most of [us] born poor though, and most people of colour came to this country against their will, chained in a boat, lest we forget. Some people were able to get certain things, fair enough, but all of us came here as slaves. Just go back three or four generations and none of us had [anything],” said Humphrey.
He was speaking in Parliament on Tuesday as he joined debate on a resolution that would see Government standing as guarantor for $2 million out of a BDS$12 million loan from the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) to the University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus to finance its regional digital transformation.
Humphrey said he was satisfied that education in Barbados was “almost guaranteed” if social circumstances allowed people to benefit.
“You are almost guaranteed to have access either at a very discounted rate, at a nursery at $20 a week . . . and in that $80 per month you are getting food for your children,” he said.
“I am one of the people [who] knew the smell of school meals from my classroom. I knew on Mondays that you gine get the orange, on Tuesdays you would get a rock cake and I knew the students who didn’t like the rock cakes too. Before lunch I would tell them ‘make sure you have your rock cake so I would get that too’. That is the truth. I know what it meant to be able to get a meal and now that I am a grown man, I know what it meant to my mother to not have to feed us – eight children, struggling to feed them,” he said.
Since the announcement of the SuN programme, which started on Monday and will run until September 2, several Barbadians have been critical of how it would be rolled out. Some callers to radio programmes said it reminded them of the “old” days and others said it reminded them of poor people lining up to be served at soup kitchens.
The programme was rolled out at 48 centres across the island and has incorporated other summer camps. Minister of Education Kay McConney reported that close to 7,500 persons had registered so far and she expected that number to increase in coming days.
Humphrey said he did not see any shame in people going for meals under the programme.
“How it is that people telling me now that it is a shame to give poor people’s children food. There ain’t no shame in being poor. The only shame is thinking that there is a shame in being poor and I am telling you that the tragedy occurring in the Barbadian society is this, many of us who a generation ago, and even sometimes our brothers and sisters, were facing poverty, get a little decent job, living from month to month like anybody else, and we are forgetting. To my mind that is the real tragedy,” said Humphrey.
