CHARITY workers blasted the government today for doing too little to help people in Afghanistan.

The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (Cafod) said some parents have had to resort to feeding grass to their children to help them survive.

Monday marked a year since the Taliban took control of the capital Kabul after the withdrawal of Western troops, stripping the rights of many Afghans and pushed them into desperate living conditions.

Cafod executive director Christine Allen said: “We’ve seen a complete shrinking of the aid package.

“The reality is that the aid that they’re giving to Afghanistan at the moment is still less than it was in 2019 — and there are twice as many people in desperate need.

“The other issue that I find really irritating is the fact that [general aid cuts] have been trumpeted as if it’s a good thing, this whole sense of ‘we’ve got to look after our own’ … when in fact this government is doing bugger all to help people who are in desperate need at home as well.”

The criticism follows the Tories breaking a manifesto pledge by cutting £4.5 billion from the aid budget.

Niamh Furey, Cafod’s programme officer for Afghanistan, said: “When you hear stories about families feeding their children grass, I think it hits home how desperate the situation is.”

She also pointed to a series of reports that families are having to “sell their young daughters” because they cannot feed their family.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said: “We doubled our aid to Afghanistan to £286 million and have matched that again this year, making it our largest bilateral UK aid programme.”