Soup Kitchen Shutdown Leaves Belgraders Hungry

Poor Serbs dependent on soup kitchens for their daily survival are dismayed after the authorities in the capital, Belgrade, decided to temporarily close them and give the recipients the equivalent of 1.5 euro [168 dinars] instead - too little to buy a meal.

The move has triggered an outcry on social media but Belgrade Mayor Sinisa Mali defended it, saying a cash handout was "the only way to keep people fed".

Users of the soup kitchens said 168 dinars is way too little to buy a meal, adding that hot food was much more useful than a tiny sum of money. 

For Zorica Ivanovic, 46, scavenging through the garbage bins near the former soup kitchen in the Orlovo settlement in Belgrade, the cash handout is a disaster.

"We used to get food from the soup kitchen. My family has eight members and the food helped us a lot. This small amount can't cover our expenses," Ivanovic told BIRN.

She was among 11,000 regular users of soup kitchens in Belgrade. It is estimated that soup kitchens provide the only source of food for some 32,000 people in Serbia. 

"We will have to manage," Ivanovic said. 

The decision to hand out money instead of free meals follows a delay in public procurement.

The soup kitchens cannot not receive further supplies of ingredients for meals until the public procurement of supplies for the kitchens is finished. 

Four companies have offered to supply the kitchens, but the city administration has yet to select the best.  

Ivana Marisavljevic Dasic, an official from the Red Cross in Belgrade, told the media on Thursday that temporary cash handouts were the "only and the best solution" for the situation.

"This was the only way to bridge this period and it is proof that there are various ways you can...