Durban — Most schools in KwaZulu-Natal are believed to now be receiving meals under the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP).
According to the Department of Basic Education, multiple service providers were used to supply and deliver food to schools, following a breakdown of logistics that brought the provincial education department under fire for the mishandling of the feeding scheme contract. This saw thousands of children going hungry at the start of the second school term.
KZN Department of Education spokesperson Muzi Mahlambi said he was confident that pupils at all schools are being fed.
“The department would like to start by apologising to the community of KZN and schools, especially our beneficiaries – which is our pupils – for the glitches we have experienced in the past three weeks,” he said.
Mahlambi said the situation had now changed with the intervention of government departments in the province, and the establishment of a task team.
“These interventions found us in motion as the education department in trying to turn around the, which culminated in us issuing a circular on April 26, stating that we were reverting to the old system of providing our children with nutrition.
“Food has been provided for this week, and service providers are making means to have food provided on a daily basis. We are busy with monitoring what was kick-started by the ministerial task team going to all districts in the province, after schools returned from Easter holidays,” said Mahlambi.
The DOE is hopeful that by next Monday they would have eradicated all the problems that the schools were experiencing.
Meanwhile, the Education Portfolio Committee conducted unannounced visits to three schools in Ugu District on Thursday to monitor the NSNP.
KZN Portfolio Committee chairperson Sifiso Sonjica said the main reason for the unannounced visits was to monitor the nutrition in these schools.
“The committee will continue with unannounced visits so that we can find out how the schools are handling the food,” said Sonjica.
KZN DA spokesperson on education Imran Keeka said the oversight visits confirmed that government intervention was needed in most schools.
“We found that the food given to pupils was insufficient, and we also found that food handlers were not paid. In one school, the cabbage was not in fit condition for consumption, which means that pupils are being fed rotten food,” said Keeka.
He said that there was a major efficiency deficit, and that nobody wanted to take responsibility, nor get to the bottom of what went wrong.
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