Food aid drying up for more Puerto Rico residents
A Washington-based public interest assistance group, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), is calling for increased food assistance to Puerto Rico, saying Puerto Rico residents are going hungry due to longstanding inequality with stateside food assistance programs and recent budget cuts.
Emergency assistance to the island in response to the multiple disasters that have befallen the island has run out, leaving a drop in food assistance from about $323 million in July to about $188 million in October, said the center’s senior research analyst, Brynne Keith-Jennings.
The problem has been exacerbated by the fact that 200,000 island residents have been added to the Nutritional Assistance Program (PAN by its Spanish acronym),which provides food assistance to Puerto Rico.
The PAN program is part of a Community Block Grant capped at $1.9 billion a year for more than 1.3 million Puerto Rico residents.
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