_{^{File photo: Dhammika Heenpella}}

Sri Lanka’s worsening economic crisis has left many impoverished people across the island unable to purchase enough food to eat, reports The Telegraph this morning.

“We used to have three meals a day but now we are having to skip dinner because of the little income that we have. This is all because of the increase in prices of essential goods,” said Susila Irangani from Dummalasuriya in Sri Lanka’s northwestern province

“The cost of living is such that we cannot even think of having a balanced meal… How can a family like us survive with the soaring prices of essential items?... Does the government want us to starve and die?”

“We anticipate that the food insecurity situation in the country will get worse over the next few months,” Jeevika Weerahewa, a senior lecturer at the University of Peradeniya, told The Telegraph, predicting that this yea’rs paddy harvest may drop by 50 percent.

Charu Lata Hogg, Associate Fellow in the Asia Program at Chatham House, termed the situation in Sri Lanka “a total disaster”.

“The country has never faced the kind of food poverty as it does now and I think the finger of responsibility rests almost entirely on the government,” said Hogg.

“There were also enough examples out there from the many African countries who have over borrowed from China and Sri Lanka could have learnt from this… It has been the perfect storm of events and living has become totally unaffordable for many lower and middle class people who can no longer afford to feed their families.”

“We are now looking at a severe humanitarian crisis.”

Read more from The Telegraph here.