South African children face hunger as school closure halts free meals

因学校停课暂停免费供餐，南非儿童面临挨饿处境

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - The closure of South Africa’s schools seven weeks ago halted a national feeding programme providing meals to 9 million extremely poor children, filling their stomachs and helping them get through the classroom day to get an education.

开普敦（路透社）-七个星期前南非的学校关闭，一项全国性的供餐计划暂时停止，该计划为900万极端贫困的儿童提供餐食，让它们饱腹，并帮助他们度过在校时光以接受教育。

Now a potential hunger crisis looms.

如今，一场潜在的饥饿危机迫在眉睫。

The economic hardship has been severe since President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered most citizens to stay indoors and shuttered all but essential businesses in late March.

自3月下旬总统西里尔·拉马福萨（Cyril Ramaphosa）命令大多数公民呆在室内，并关闭除了提供必需品的企业之外所有企业以来，经济困境一直很严峻。

“We have kids here at school who faint (from hunger),” said Shireen Valentyn, 41, a volunteer at Hoofweg primary school in the impoverished Blue Downs community in Cape Town.

开普敦贫困的蓝唐斯社区胡夫韦格小学的一名志愿者，41岁的希琳·瓦伦廷(Shireen Valyn)说：“我们学校里有孩子(因为饥饿)晕倒了。”

The school is closed for classes but is providing children and their guardians meals as part of an emergency scheme, unique to South Africa’s Western Cape Province, officials said.

官员说，这所学校停了课，但作为紧急计划的一部分，向儿童及其监护人提供餐食，这是南非西开普省特有的规定。

“In our kids there is a lot of hunger,” Valentyn said. In the morning they queue in the cold for porridge. Later separate lines of children and adults wait with plastic lunch boxes for a midday meal of cooked butternut and tinned fish breyani.

瓦伦廷说：“在我们的孩子中，挨饿情况大量存在。”早上，他们在寒冷中排队买粥。之后，小孩和成人分开排队，拿着塑料午餐盒等着装煮熟的胡桃和罐头鱼布里亚尼作为午餐。

South Africa reopened some sectors of the economy on May 1 as the government sought to kickstart a stuttering economy.

由于政府试图重启陷入停滞的经济，南非在5月1日重新开放部分经济部门。 

Schools are expected to partially reopen later this month, with students seen back in class from June 1.

预计部分学校将在本月晚些时候重新开放，学生们将从6月1日起重回课堂。

But there is no certainty over when the national school nutrition programme will resume, piling pressure on poor families struggling to make ends meet.

但是，尚不确定国家制定的学校营养计划何时恢复实施，这给努力维持收支平衡的贫困家庭带来了沉重压力。

The education department did not respond immediately to a request for comment on the school meal programme.

教育部门并没有就评论学校就餐计划的要求立即做出回应。

“I am also worried about the virus but there is nothing we can do because we can’t stay hungry,” said mother-of-two Thabisa Nete, 33, as she got a hot meal at Vuyani primary school in Cape Town’s Gugulethu township.

33岁的塔比萨·内特(Thabisa Nete)是两个孩子的母亲，她在开普敦古古莱图镇的Vuyani小学吃到热餐时说：“我也很担心病毒，但我们无能为力，因为我们不能一直挨饿。”

The University of Cape Town’s Children’s Institute said before the pandemic, a quarter of South Africa’s under-fives were nutritionally stunted and 6.4 million children under 18 survived on less than $32 a month.

开普敦大学儿童研究所表示，疫情发生之前，南非四分之一的五岁以下儿童营养不良，并且有640万18岁以下未成年人每月靠不到32美元生存。

The government had distributed over 250,000 emergency food parcels to poor families by the end of April, the social development minister said, and provided an extra 50 billion rand for social grants.

社会发展部长说，到4月底，政府向贫困家庭分发的紧急食品包已超过25万个，并额外提供了500亿兰特的社会补助金。

But child rights activists still warn of a “hunger crisis”.

但是儿童权利积极分子仍然警告说可能会出现“饥饿危机”。

“There is certainly a hunger crisis ... and from the perspective of children, I would say that this is a severe implication for their ability to survive,” said Nurina Ally, executive director at Equal Education Law Centre (EELC).

平等教育法律中心（EELC）执行主任努里娜·艾丽（Nurina Ally）表示：“饥饿危机肯定是存在的……从儿童的角度来看，这会严重影响他们的生存能力。”

The EELC is one of five groups lobbying Ramaphosa to immediately restart the national feeding scheme or replace it with viable alternatives like food vouchers, as some other countries have done, or substantial increases to child support grants.

包括EELC在内的五个团体游说拉马福萨立即重新启动国家供餐计划，或者像其他一些国家那样，用食品券等可行的替代方案取而代之，或者大幅增加儿童抚养费。

外文网址：https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-safrica-hunger/south-african-children-face-hunger-as-school-closure-halts-free-meals-idUSKBN22J1UL?il=0