MAINZ – The corona virus also hits the tablets in Rhineland-Palatinate hard. Two weeks ago, the state association reported significant declines in donations due to hamster purchases, and twelve institutions have since closed, including Mainz, Worms, Oppenheim, Alzey and Bad Kreuznach.
The epidemic comes through the aid organization in a very tense transition phase, as the Ministry of Social Affairs in Mainz suggests. At the moment there is “no evidence of an ‘excessive overload’ of the tables”, nothing is known about financial deficits either. Nevertheless, individual facilities are facing new tasks, reports Minister Sabine Batzing-Lichtenthaler (SPD): “These are fundamentally solvable challenges.”
The facilities serve 54,500 people
Batzing-Lichtenthaler explains this in an answer to a large request from the CDU parliamentary group, which had already been asked and processed before the Corona outbreak. For its information, it essentially relies on the independent Landesverband Tafel Rheinland-Pfalz / Saarland, which is not under state supervision.
According to this, there are currently 54 tablets with 86 dispensing points in Rhineland-Palatinate, including in Mainz, Worms, Bingen, Bad Kreuznach, Kirn and Sobernheim. They provide for 54,500 people, around half of whom receive social assistance. A quarter of customers receive basic security or a pension. In contrast, the proportion of asylum seekers is “only” around 20 percent.
Of the approximately 4,700 employees, only 160 receive remuneration, the majority work on a voluntary basis. Almost all of the tables are carried by our own associations or are part of larger associations such as “Meeting Point Railing” in Bad Kreuznach or the homeless initiative “Platte” in Bingen. For them, donations remain the most important source of income. Public grants from local authorities receive 42 percent of the boards. However, just like the “coin” – that is the symbolic contribution of customers in the amount of one to two euros – they only play a subordinate role.
“There is no nationwide financial support for the panels,” emphasizes Batzing-Lichtenthaler. And it should stay that way because it corresponds to the self-image of the boards. The Ministry of Social Affairs could only promise grants for further training measures for Tafel employees, as part of the measures to combat poverty.
So the boards have to solve their future challenges themselves – and
these are not a few: in addition to the well-known, dwindling willingness to volunteer, the state association expects a shift from individual to large donations. For this, more central storage capacities have to be created, especially for cooling products.
Perhaps the biggest problem: Many donors want a “project-related use of funds”, writes Batzing-Lichtenthaler, citing the association. So donations in kind for a certain target group or an occasion. The biggest cost factors of the boards, however, are rents, electricity and other ongoing operating costs, for example for the purchase and maintenance of vehicles or buildings. According to the state association, “decisive part” of the costs also has to comply with legal regulations in terms of food hygiene and data protection. That sounds a bit like “bureaucracy eat up bars”.
Because direct promotion of the tables is neither possible nor desired, Batzing-Lichtenthaler continues to see the state government’s strongest lever to support the associations in general poverty reduction: “The key to reducing poverty and social inequality is a good economic and labor market – and pension policy. ”The measures taken, which Batzing-Lichtenthaler lists on two pages, do not help the tables directly. The bottom line is that the country supports the food banks most by ensuring that fewer and fewer people have to go out of poverty. Because of Corona this is not possible at the moment.
