Islamabad - Buying a single meal is becoming difficult for tens of thousands of Pakistanis as the country's economy suffers heavily due to its fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents. In hard times, the free community meals provided by rich businessmen, local and multinational companies and the government during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan are a major relief for many poor and unemployed.
These meals, called Iftar, are provided at public parks, mosques and restaurants just after sunset when Muslims break their day-long fast.
"I have no work for the last three days and therefore no money," said 45-year-old laborer Ghulam Nabi as he dined at Liaqat Bagh, a public park in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.
"Thanks to God that they give us free food here, otherwise I would have starved to death," he added.
Nabi and some 4,500 more people who are served with dates, bananas, rooh afza (a local beverage) and chicken biriani (a dish consisting of chicken and rice) every day at the Liquat Bagh by construction tycoon and billionaire Malik Riaz Hussain.
Some 500 food parcels are also available for those who want to take food home.
"At least 25 per cent of those who visit the place are women," said Hussain's spokesman Rasheed Ahmad. "We spend around 250,000 rupees (3,048 dollars) on every meal."
Malik is one of the hundreds of rich businessmen who have joined a scheme introduced by the local government in Punjab, the largest province and home of more than 60 per cent of Pakistan's 160 million population, to provide free dinners to the poor.
"The major bulk of the funds are provided by the philanthropists and we only make the arrangements for distribution of food," said Rashid Mehmood, who oversees the scheme named as Ramdan Dastarkhwan.
More than 50,000 poor, widows and orphans are served every day in 36 districts of the province, added Mehmood. "We are doing as much as we can to provide relief to the people but you know we don't have enough money."
Traditionally, a mosque was the place where community meals would be served and many attended the feast just to socialize. In recent years, however, the free meals have become a means of survival for many.
"Every year we see more and more people attending Ijtimai Iftari (collective Iftar meal) and most of them are poor. What satisfied us the most is that as the poverty increases so does the generosity of the rich," said Mohammad Naeem, a mosque imam.
But many beneficiaries of the community meals blame the very rich who serve them for their miseries.
"These rich hoarders, profiteers and factory owners first made huge money by raising the prices of food items during Ramadan and when we were unable to buy meals for ourselves, they started to feed us," said a cobbler, Allah Bux.
Prices of staples such as meat, milk, cooking oil and sugar shot up in the first day of Ramadan, increasing between 30 and 40 per cent from the previous week.
"Of course, they would like to keep us alive so that they can suck more blood," Bux added.
