Associate Health Minister Peeni Henare says the Government hears the cry of whānau in Tāmaki Makaurau who are struggling in lockdown.
Despite poverty action groups calling for more financial support for the disadvantaged, Henare said it is supporting groups such as the Auckland City Mission who are distributing food parcels.
However, he did acknowledge "there is an acute challenge here for us".
"As a network we’re getting there, but as a Government we hear this plea constantly and we’ll continue to look towards how we might support more of our whānauwith respect to food security into the future."
Henare said the Delta variant had changed the landscape significantly.
Associate Health Minister Peeni Henare says it is constantly looking at how to support people with food security into future.
"We know that this is a particularly challenging time and we’re not hiding from that fact, but what we need to do is more work with the community to make sure they are resilient into the future.
"I think some of the announcements in recent times while looking towards the Delta outbreak in the first instance will require even more resourcing into the future to make sure they’re even more resilient as we go forward, but that is a particular challenge.
"We heard that in May last year ... we’ve put significant investment in this space."
Henare said this most recently included three Whānau Ora commissioning agencies receiving an immediate boost of $8.816 million and a further $14.216 million being distributed based on need as information on the impact of the current change in alert levels unfolds.
Last week it was also announced the Ministry of Social Development would be making a $2 million fund immediately available to partner with iwi responding to critical unmet needs.
Funding of $1 million, from the Covid-19 Response and Resilience Fund, would also be available to support iwi community responses and assist them to update pandemic response plans to take into account the new reality of the Delta variant.
Henare's comments came after the Auckland City Mission told Breakfast it had distributed about 6000 food parcels in the last three weeks.
This was four times more food parcels than it had distributed in lockdown last year.
SHARE ME