Children ‘still go hungry’

FEEDING SCHEME: EQUAL EDUCATION BIDS TO FORCE DEPARTMENT’S HAND

Court action to have ‘all qualifying pupils receive their daily meals’.

Despite assurances from the department of basic education that its school feeding scheme would be back up and running by last Monday, Equal Education says vulnerable children around the country are still going hungry.

The movement striving for quality and equality in the education system, conducted a snap survey last Tuesday and said the results revealed three months after it was suspended as a result of the Covid-19, the National Schools Nutrition Programme (NSNP) was still not fully operational again.

The results revealed “administrative chaos, confusion and nondelivery”, Equal Education said in papers filed in the High Court in Pretoria at the weekend.

This as part of an urgent bid to have a judge step in and force the department’s hand, expected to be heard tomorrow.

Last month, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga announced the phased reopening of schools – starting with Grades 7 and 12 – and that the NSNP would resume for all qualifying pupils at the same time.

She later reneged on the latter and last month announced the department needed more time to “acclimatise to the new environment”.

This prompted Equal Education – along with the governing bodies of two Limpopo schools – to approach the court with an urgent application for an order declaring “all qualifying pupils, regardless of whether or not they have resumed classes at their respective schools, are entitled to receive a daily meal as provided for under the NSNP”.

They also want a supervisory order, directing the national and provincial departments to come up with a plan to resume the NSNP and every two weeks file progress reports with the court. The department’s director-general, Mathanzima Mweli, last week described the court action as “unnecessary” and said his officials had endeavoured as best they could to continue the NSNP.

“We are in fact doing precisely that which the applicants want us to do and we have been doing so without judicial supervision … There is no need for any of the relief pursued in this application,” he said in court papers.

Mweli said nearly all schools were ready to continue the NSNP when Grades 7 and 12 went back to school last month but that “everyone had to adapt and adjust to a new reality and it was therefore not practically feasible to run this programme fully and comprehensively from the very first day”.

He said it had taken “two weeks to sort out a few hiccups” but that a target date of 22 June had been set for the NSNP to continue in all but one of the country’s nine provinces.

But in its heads of arguments, which were filed at the weekend, Equal Education said the department had not been candid with the court and pointed to the case of a 17 year old in rural KwaZulu-Natal who was the de facto caregiver in a household of six people.

She last week confirmed to Equal Education that her two younger siblings, in Grades 2 and 5, were still not receiving any food from their school.

Equal Education pointed to decreasing food security and increasing hunger during the national lockdown.

“For beneficiaries, the problem was acute. Overnight, a reliable source of food came to an end,” it said.–

Results revealed ‘administrative confusion and nondelivery’