Added to the complicated labyrinth of the immigration crisis in New York City is the certainty that tons of “untouched” food, They end up discarded in the surroundings of emergency sheltersbecause as the immigrants themselves denounce: They are of very poor quality!
For this reason, this week the Council’s Contracting and Small Business Commission summoned spokespersons from the municipal government to seek explanations about the contracting criteria of the providers of these services, which since the wave of newcomers began, in the spring 2022, have received $463 million to provide breakfasts, lunches and dinners for those living in the shelter system.
The councilors aspire to review penny by penny this “high municipal bill.” Although looking to the future, the firm objective of the municipal chamber is to create rules so that small businesses and restaurants in the neighborhoods of the Big Apple can be the suppliers of these foods to immigrants seeking asylum.
The Manhattan Councilman Gale Brewer who heads the Supervision and Investigations Committee, described as “grotesque” that immigrants’ meals end up in garbage containersat a time when libraries, schools and trash collection services are slated to suffer steep budget reductions.
“I have personally received complaints from the residents of Riverside and from the Sanitation Department employees themselves. We want to know exactly Why does this very high cost for the City end up in the trash?“, he highlighted.
Contracts for small businesses
For its part, the Councilor Amanda Farías She was “disappointed” that the municipal agencies dealing with this crisis have not been able to review the nutritional levels and quality of these products. after more than a year in which these types of complaints have been very recurrent.
“If we are talking about contracts signed for one year, It would be normal for reviews to be made halfway through the process. That has not happened,” he concluded.
Likewise, the Councilwoman Julie Won, representatives of western Queens neighborhoods such as Astoria and Long Island City, He said that every day he receives immigrants showing them the quality of the products.
In this sense, Won proposes that the hundreds of thousands of dollars the city spends on bad food in shelters, target contracts with local restaurants.
“They would be given support to expand and meet the need. They could join this ecosystem and help the local economy, give jobs to people and save small businesses,” he argued.
Councilwoman Amanda Farías of The Bronx wonders why after months of hiring the City was unable to evaluate the quality of the food served to the newcomers. (Photo: G. Romo -NYC Council)
“We have been transparent”
Faced with the bombardment of doubts and questions from the councilors, the Dr Ted Long, spokesperson for the New York City Public Hospital Corporation (H+H), one of the officials in charge of managing this humanitarian crisis, specified that a large part of the hiring was done under an emergency statute, going to suppliers that already had a tradition of services with the City.
“We can say that we have addressed this crisis with humanity, but mainly with a lot of transparency. Obviously there are many things that we are perfecting along the way,” he said.
Long assured that at this time several municipal agencies, which manage this contingency, They are in a review stage to expand food service hiring of local vendors.
On November 30, 2023, the New York City Comptroller Brad Landerrevoked the City’s emergency contracting authority to enter into specific agreements with migrant services, including providing food for shelters.
This decision requires that the Adams administration now receive the ‘case-by-case’ approval from the Comptroller’s office, before closing an agreement to provide food for migrant shelters.
“It does not taste like anything”
According to queries made by The newspaper In some shelters in Queens, in fact, the majority of recently arrived immigrants who live in emergency hotels report that in many cases the meals They are frozen, of very poor quality, they even come decomposed. The most common observation is that “they taste like nothing.”
There are also cases that when meals arrive at the shelters, people are not present because they are looking for work. And everything is lost because the suppliers leave them anyway.
“You are grateful that they give you food. It’s not complaining for the sake of complaining. But in reality it is almost always very bad. In many cases, people have hidden electric stoves to prepare their own food.. Or they go to other places where they offer other types of hot food,” he said. María Pardo, a Venezuelan immigrant, who has been housed in a hotel in Long Island City, Queens, since July.
Another immigrant consulted assures that it is a cultural issue: “We are not used to many things, but the effort is appreciated. We are not going to expect, in addition to receiving accommodation, to also eat à la carte”
$1 million in the trash?
According to a report this week from The New York Times one of the largest contractors that supplies food to migrants in shelters is called DocGo, “a medical services company, which won a no-bid contract worth $432 million to provide general care to migrants.”
DocGo receives up to $33 a day per migrant for providing three meals a day to each of the approximately 4,000 migrants under their care.
The New York media points out that of the “From October 22 to November 10, DocGo recorded more than 70,000 meals as wasted, according to internal company accounts.”
At $11 per meal, the maximum rate allowed by the contract, food “wasted” during that 20-day period would cost taxpayers about $776 thousand dollars, or about $39,000 dollars per day.
In response to protests over food quality, DocGo spokespeople have promised to make improvements, such as introducing halal food for Muslim immigrants and make adjustments for the predominantly Hispanic population.
The data:
- 40,000 small food businesses could generate 500,000 jobs in the Big Apple, but it is necessary to simplify the hiring processes for an industry that is burdened by low profit margins and complex regulatory requirements, maintains the NYC City Council in a report.
2023-12-15 18:40:00
#investigate #NYC #food #immigrants #shelters #expensive #bad #Tons #trash #Journal
