More dodgy lunchboxes served up

The Office of the Basic Education Commission (Obec) has found irregularities at 11 more schools in a nationwide survey of state-run schools’ free lunch programmes.

The survey was conducted after a case emerged of a school in Khon Kaen being accused of providing poor-quality lunches to students. All educational areas have now submitted their reports, said Obec secretary-general Boonrux Yodpheth yesterday.

The 11 other schools facing investigation are: one school each in Prachin Buri, Phitsanulok, Sing Buri, Surat Thani and Narathiwat provinces, three schools in Surin, two in Lop Buri, and one in Ang Thong, he said.

A committee has been set up by Obec to further probe each of the 12 cases, he said, adding that if the panel found sufficient evidence of wrongdoing, the school director will be transferred.

In the Khon Kaen school case, for instance, the school director has already been transferred while a probe is being conducted into the school’s alleged provision of poor-quality lunches to its students, he said. A further probe is focused on the selection and the hiring of the lunch caterer supplying the poor-quality lunches to students, which led to a group of parents petitioning the Interior Ministry’s Damrongtham Centre, he said.

Obec has instructed the directors of its regional offices to continue scrutinising the spending of budgets set aside to fund school lunches, to ensure the transparency and accountability of school spending, he said.

Obec has for several decades supported schools under its jurisdiction to strictly follow government regulations on procuring ingredients for lunches, he said. But irregularities in the spending of lunch budgets emerged recently and reflected certain schools not complying with regulations, he said. Large amounts of state money are said to be involved, not to mention the diet of the children left with food with poor nutrition.

Although the problems surrounding the school lunch programme are still limited at this point, the impact is substantial as they may affect child development, he said.

Supaset Khanakul, president of the Association Board of Coordination and Promotion of the Private Education, meanwhile, said the association is calling for an equal subsidy from the government for school lunches at private schools.

Currently, while state-run schools receive a full subsidy to fund their lunch programmes, private ones receive only 28% of the funding, he said.

He was speaking at seminar held yesterday in Bangkok and attended by Deputy Prime Minister ACM Prajin Juntong.