Serbia: Cash Crisis Shuts Soup Kitchens

Tuesday, 6 September, 2005

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Marko Romcevic

A financial crisis has put thousands of Serbia’s most vulnerable people at risk of losing their only daily meal.

The withdrawal of international donors has left the cash-strapped government struggling to fund nearly 80 soup kitchens used by impoverished or sickly Serbs.

For much of the last decade, they would queue six days a week to receive a portion of bread and a cooked meal. But at the beginning of June, many kitchens were forced to close due to lack of money.

The free food programme has been running since 1992, when an anonymous donor distributed 2,000 meals to the needy. Since then, the number benefiting from the service had grown to 30,000, at cost of 21 euro per person per month.

But in the last few months, international aid agencies have ended their involvement in the programme, handing over responsibility to local authorities.

The German Red Cross was the last major donor to pull out of the scheme on March 31.

The government has promised to keep only 28 out of 78 soup kitchens open – one in each municipality – until the end of December.

In Serbia’s northern province of Vojvodina, the programme continues in only two of 15 original outlets. Those in Pozarevac, Smederevska palanka, Uzice, Cuprija, and Jagodina have been closed down. One in Bujanovac, southern Serbia, which used to have one thousand visitors a day, has also been shut.

In Belgrade, the capital’s authorities have pledged to continue the food scheme, financing it from the city assembly budget and providing meals for nearly 7,000 people six days a week – a reduction of around 40 per cent.

One pensioner from the Palilula area of the capital, who did not want to give his name, told IWPR, "My [monthly] pension is around 50 euro, which is just enough for me to pay my regular bills [the average salary in 150 euro], but leaves me hardly anything to buy food.

“I have been coming here for the past few years and I don’t know what will happen to those whose local kitchen has closed down. Even the one day a week that the kitchens did not operate was a problem for people.”

Dragica Kljajic, the Serbian Red Cross coordinator for food provision, said local authorities are struggling to meet the cost of the soup kitchens. "The programme is now almost fully dependent on the municipal governments – and these bodies have to find ways to finance it in the future,” she said.

“At the moment, the budgets are irregular and we were left with no choice but to close many kitchens. We hope that some donors will show compassion and help us keep the programme running, because otherwise there could be tragic consequences.”

Damir Glavonjic of the Palilula municipal administration told IWPR that the situation was now extremely serious. "There are 4,800 socially handicapped people - those whose family income does not exceed 20 euro per person [a month] - in our area alone,” he said. "We don’t think it’s right for international organisations to withdraw in these crucial times of transition.”

The Red Cross says more soup kitchens may be forced to close in the near future. "This current state of affairs – where we are requesting that local municipalities take charge cannot go on for much longer,” said Kljajic.

“One possible solution would be for each donor to pick one municipality and finance the programme in it.”

In the capital, the Palilula pensioner shakes his head as he ponders the current situation. “I am a native Belgrader and I can hardly believe I have lived to see this,” he told IWPR.

“But the people will help us to survive - a woman volunteering in the kitchen gave me a euro yesterday."

Marko Romcevic is a journalism student at the University of Belgrade.