“The economy has deteriorated but we have not reached the point where we need shipping containers with food. We do not have people who are dying of hunger or who sleep in concrete culverts,”  Dharm Mungra, chairman of De Nieuwe Leeuw (DNL), told Times of Suriname. “This is not something to be proud of. We are the 17th richest country and have the potential for development but we are not even able to provide our people with food. We ask a man who can’t even feed his own people for help. A man whose people are dying of hunger and whose people do not have access to the medicines that they need,” said  Mungra. The politician made it clear that the Surinamese people should not accept this even if India had offered to give us shipping containers with food. “The government should be ashamed. This is something that my party and I can’t accept.”

Meanwhile a number of shipping containers that are filled with food from India have arrived in Suriname. Foreign Affairs, International Business and  International Collaboration Minister Albert Ramdin explained that the shipping containers are a gift. The food parcels will be available for the less fortunate and will be distributed next week. President Chandrikapersad Santokhi and India’s ambassador to Suriname will be present at the official launch of the distribution of the food parcels.