By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Tribune Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

SUSAN Larson, head of the National Food Distribution Task Force, said the group is hoping the abrupt decision to close food stores will be reconsidered.

“We are hoping the abrupt decision to close the food stores will be revisited. The task force was never designed to provide assistance on demand,” the task force chairman told The Tribune on Tuesday.

Mrs Larson said she was told “…water depots will be open as well Wednesday and Friday, 6am to 6pm so that will help.” However this has not been confirmed by the government.

Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis announced an immediate seven-day lockdown for New Providence Monday night, closing food stores, water depots and private pharmacies.

According to Mrs Larson, at the time of her interview with The Tribune, 154 households had registered within the past hour and 2,642 signed up within the past day.

The task force saw an influx of interested people after Dr Minnis’ announcement.

Residents have told The Tribune they do not have enough food and provisions to last seven days and also flooded social media with complaints.

“We are working on solutions but it takes more than 24 hours to order (a) product, package it, and get it distributed,” Mrs Larson said when asked if the impromptu lockdown had created a huge challenge for the task force.

“We are re-engineering our food parcels to increase our capacity to assist more people. We are trying to be as creative as possible,” she said, when asked whether it was likely people needing urgent help would get it.

“We ask the public for its understanding and support. This is an extraordinarily unprecedented time. Our Public Treasury is in peril. We are trying to put as much value in each food parcel as we can.

“We are absolutely doing the best we can and we know that tens of thousands of people are grateful for the help,” she said.

There have also been complaints that some people have not been able to register for the programme.

This newspaper was sent a screenshot of a message sent to an applicant to the food programme which read, “Rapid registration is currently down. What does this mean? New people cannot register for food assistance throughout the National Task Force at this time.”

Asked about this, Mrs Larson said this was an old message that would be corrected.