Critics of Lula's flagship programme say it has been wrapped up in red tape and is showing zero progress. But adviser Frei Betto said it was already helping 15 million people, although he conceded it would take longer than Lula promised to reach its goal of guaranteeing three meals a day for all.
"I don't consider it a flop. On the contrary, I think it's a huge success considering the economic difficulties with which we came to power," Betto said in an interview on the sidelines of an Inter-American Development Bank meeting in Lima, Peru.
Success by 2006 "I think we're going to need eight years to do this project well," he added. Lula launched the programme when he took office in 2003, promising success by the end of his term in 2006.
"I think that in 2006 we are going to be able to guarantee at least one good meal a day in every family," Betto said.
"We hope Lula will be re-elected and will then have four more years to do this programme well," he added.
So far small rural towns only The plan - which pays 50 to 95 reais (about R112 to R211) depending on the number of children in school to families with monthly incomes under about R200 - has so far been confined to rural towns with less than 75 000 people to try to stop migration.
"This year, Zero Hunger will reach the big cities ... state capitals, Rio, Sao Paulo," Betto said. "Half of Brazil's poor are in the big cities."
In 2004, the goal is to feed 6.5 million families - more than half the program's overall target of 11.3 million. That total translates into some 44 million people who go hungry in Latin America's most populous nation and biggest economy.
Child mortality rate 'a scandal' Betto said it was "a scandal in a country that has 170 million people, the same number of cattle, that is going to harvest 120 million tonnes of grain and is one of the world's five biggest food producers that there is hunger, that 150 000 children under five die every year because of hunger."
The government is spending about R13.2 billion to hit its 2004 anti-hunger goal, a leap from the aproximately R4.6 billion spent in 2003. The cash comes from taxes and the national budget.
Zero Hunger has been touched by scandal the over siphoning off of funds, but Betto - a priest and longtime friend of Lula - said it was a very small problem. "We've got a project to eradicate hunger. We still haven't come up with a programme to eradicate original sin," he said. - Reuters
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