{"id":4596,"date":"2021-01-03T16:17:21","date_gmt":"2021-01-03T16:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=145691"},"modified":"2021-01-03T16:17:21","modified_gmt":"2021-01-03T16:17:21","slug":"many-tajiks-forced-to-skip-meals-as-poverty-deepens-survey-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/03\/many-tajiks-forced-to-skip-meals-as-poverty-deepens-survey-shows\/","title":{"rendered":"Many Tajiks Forced To Skip Meals As Poverty Deepens, Survey Shows"},"content":{"rendered":"
Maryam, a school janitor in the northern Tajik city of Khujand, says she often skips meals so her three children can eat “enough food.”<\/p>\n
“I cook once a day in the evening — we eat half of it for dinner and leave the rest for the children’s lunch the following day,” she says. The 38-year-old mother doesn’t eat lunch herself.<\/p>\n
“Instead I make myself busy with work and it helps me not to think if I’m hungry,” Maryam told RFE\/RL. “Also, I make hot tea and put lots of sugar in it. It helps, too. If I ate lunch, we wouldn’t have enough food for the kids.”<\/p>\n
Maryam and her family found themselves living on the brink of poverty when her husband, a freight train worker, lost his job in May.<\/p>\n
As the impoverished Central Asian nation struggles with the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, a significant number of the country’s 9.5 million people are forced to eat less, with many skipping meals entirely and some even going hungry, a new survey by the World Bank shows.<\/p>\n