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THE Taguig City government on Monday launched a citywide
feeding program dubbed “Hot Meal and Milk for Day-Care Centers”
as a way to fight malnutrition.
Taguig Mayor Sigfrido Tinga
called for stronger national and local nutrition programs that would
decrease, if not totally eliminate malnutrition in the country.
In the next 42 days, 9,000
pre-school children from the city’s 117 registered day-care
centers would be fed a variety of hot meals and a glass of milk for
breakfast. This is equivalent to one-third of the daily recommended
energy and nutrient intakes (RENIs) of pre-school children.
“The alarming rate of hunger
and malnutrition in the country calls for a more aggressive action
both on the part of the local and national government,” Fresnedi
said. “ We believe that these feeding programs, in a way, address
these problems by providing a much-needed relief from hunger.”
A recent survey by the Social
Weather Stations showed that the hunger rate in the country had
risen from 15.1 percent in the third quarter of 2004 to 15.5 percent
in the same period in 2005. This is equivalent to an estimated 2.6
million families that cannot afford to eat at least once a day.
Last year President Arroyo
ordered the implementation of the Accelerated Hunger Mitigation
Program as the government’s response to the increasing hunger
incidence in the country.
 --Jonathan
M. Hicap
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