Dozens of residents too poor to feed themselves
SHOCK figures have emerged showing the level of poverty in Sutherland with 71 hard-up residents – including children – forced to seek help from a foodbank last year.
The figure for the county is contained in an alarming report released this week by Blythswood Trust, which runs the Highland Foodbank.
The statistics show that more than 4000 people in the Highlands were fed via the foodbank in 2013.
Out of the 71 in Sutherland who asked for help, 54 came from the North, West and Central Sutherland ward and 17 from East Sutherland and Edderton.
Fifty of the 71 were adults and the remainder children.
One Highland councillor – whose Inverness ward had the largest number of individuals needing help to eat – has claimed the figures are "a damning indictment" on the welfare system.
Delays in benefit payments and low income were the top two reasons why vouchers were issued.
The foodbank sees parcels packed with essential and non-perishable food to last three days and is awarded to individuals and families in desperate need.
The charity delivers food boxes in Inverness, Caithness, Sutherland, Easter Ross, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey.
Vouchers are given out by health professionals, social workers and job centres.
Out of that whopping total, 1360 foodbank recipients live in the Inverness Central ward, represented by the SNP’s Richard Laird.
The second biggest total was in Wick where 304 people got help from the foodbank and in third place was the Tain and Easter Ross ward where 256 residents received assistance.
The oldest councillor in the Highlands, octogenarian John Ford, last year compared the soaring numbers of people needing help from a foodbank to World War Two rationing.
The Labour councillor claimed the "appalling" situation had been worsened by the "wholly immoral" bedroom tax’s introduction – and said it reminded him of wartime Britain in the 1940s.
