Must needed food support during pandemic: A teacher’s view
By Md Faiz Ullah
Every human being is entitled to the right to get adequate food, which is crucial for complementing the enjoyment of all rights. One of the important objectives of modern welfare states is to ensure this basic need for their people. Neither constitutional provisions nor existing legislations of Bangladesh directly recognize the right to food. Article 15 of the Constitution of Bangladesh indirectly requires the state to ensure the basic necessities of life including food. Article 15 of the Constitution states that it shall be a fundamental responsibility of the State to attain, through planned economic growth, a constant increase of productive forces and a steady improvement in the material and cultural standard of living of the people, with a view to securing the provision of the basic necessities of life, including food, clothing, shelter, education and medical care for its citizens. Although there is no specific law or the constitutional provision directly recognizing the right to food, there are laws in Bangladesh which indirectly defend the right to food. These laws are supposed to create a strong national legal framework for protecting the right to food. However, the reality is thoroughly opposite.
As I have been working as an assistant teacher at an under resourced government primary school at Kamrangi Char in Dhaka for around two years. I have witnessed myriad of plights that my students and the community have been going through. One such problem is food crisis. Since most of the people of that community are garment workers, rickshaw pullers and day laborers who hardly can satisfy their daily needs let alone think about luxury. During the country wide lockdown, they merely could manage their daily food because of the closure of income source. In addition, as a teacher and mentor, I have been in constant contact with my students, and it has been my daily responsibility to look after them and make sure the uninterrupted education of my kids while they can’t have three square meals a day. Besides, it’s fairly cumbersome to learn something effectively on an empty or hungry stomach which is also proved by some scientific and psychological studies. Hence, I had to communicate and collaborate with several volunteer organizations that have been extending their upper hands relentlessly through thick and thin to provide the destitute with daily food and sustenance. This is because I believe that it is inhuman to ask my students to submit their homework or study without helping them with food and necessary monetary help. Thanks to them who stand for thousands of people to live during this life-threatening pandemic, and without their support and assistance, hundreds of people could go hungry or pass away. It was predicted before the country wide shut down that the lives of low income people would be affected more by the crisis of food compared to covid-19 as our government is yet to prepare a reliable database of the poor and vulnerable, which continues to pose a major setback for the distribution of food aid to those in need though the government has repeatedly allocated food and monetary aid after the pandemic broke out.
In my case, two youth voluntary organizations, which are working in Bangladesh to help the poor and the community in need, played crucial role. Their timely actions to provide my students with food were life-saving. Without their continuous support, it would be fairly impossible for me to complete my commitments and responsibilities towards my students. Now, I have been teaching them both online and offline on a regular basis. Similarly, I can readily look after their mental health which is considered to be one of the most important things to care about especially when children can’t go to school and play with their friends. In addition, my role has been crucial as a teacher because parents can’t make the students live and joyful and don’t know how to deal with children’s unlikely behavior especially under these special circumstances because of their poor level of education, ignorance and knowledge.
Voluntary organizations have also fallen short of reaching the vulnerable in a systemic manner, given the absence of a central database, which is why I was asked to share the bio-data of limited numbers of needy students whom they would be provided with food assistance. Since I have already known about the poor economic status of many of my students, I had to recheck and talked to the students and their parents repeatedly about their current situation, and what I found from them had made me shocked and I didn’t know what to do and what should I tell them or how should I console them. Finally, I have made a list of 50 needy students among five hundred consulting with other teachers and community members. However, teachers of the school and the volunteers of the said organizations along with me had to answer several questions from the remaining students’ parents, and receive more than two hundred phone calls. At the same way, it is admitted that most of the people being unemployed needed help, it was excruciating for us and the volunteers to digest the sufferings of the people who used to live below the poverty even before the arrival of this crisis. Thus, there is no need to mention with heart that how miserable their lives are. Besides, I along with other teachers have been hearing thousands of problems of our students till today. However, it is also our pleasure that our community has started sharing their concealed plights confiding us, and that is why we are committed to listen to them and guide and help them to put an end to this crisis.
Finally, it is a key responsibility of the government to make sure that not a single person irrespective of their backgrounds lacks proper food and nutrition, and goes hungry. If we can’t ensure the due food and nutrition for them, it won’t be unwise to say that we live in a fool’s paradise that one day all human beings will be free from hunger and the opportunity for all to live a better life will be created.
The writer is a researcher.
