†—…ƒ–‹‘ ‹‹•–‡”•

the calls to declare GBV a national emergency. Notwithstanding the structural challenges, we applaud women in our country who continue to be pillars at family, community and national levels. Hence the call for women to be elevated to all strategic positions because they are humans and must enjoy the rights enshrined in the country’s Constitution. I agree with someone, on social media, who said; “We also should not forget the over 40 women who were murdered by the convicted David Simelane.”

On the topic for the day, honourable ministers, I received a distress call from a teacher in one of the schools in the northern part of the country who had a child in front of him who was requesting something to eat. When he enquired about the family’s situation, the child said he stayed with his grandmother and an unemployed father together with some of his siblings.

Cases

He stated that there was no food at home to eat since even the elderly grants had not been paid and his father is unemployed and relied on unpredictable piece jobs. The teacher said this was one of many cases teachers faced on a daily basis. They watch children try to share whatever the others were able to bring to school. Hence, I was so touched that I had to make a contribution to address the immediate situation the teacher was facing.

In November 2022, IRIN quoted a child on a school feeding scheme. “There is no food at home. I am fed at school. I think I would die without school meals, like my sister did,” Janice Simelane, an eight-year-old Grade II pupil at Eswatini’s Sorani Primary School, told IRIN. “The big problem before the school feeding scheme

was that children were sleeping in class, or not paying attention. They were just so weak,” said a teacher, Sizwe Shabangu. He further explained; “There was no liveliness in the class. Children were not acting like children, but like old folks or invalids. But now they are more attentive in class, and they are running like children in the playground.”

Critical

The issue of lack of food in schools has been in the public domain since 2022, and one would have thought that it was now a priority of government to address. It is well known that the school meal is critical for pupils who come from families that are struggling to make ends meet. Hence, it is an integral part of social protection measures that countries put in place to address the plight of hunger in schools. The Ministry of Education did allude to a decision to ration food in 2022 as food prices surged due to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which affected the food value chain globally. As a result, in 2023 it seems school feeding supplies have totally dried up, plunging schools into a deep crisis.

With Eswatini’s high poverty levels now at 58.8 per cent, high unemployment and other shocks, children from poor backgrounds, in particular rural and peri-urban schools that depended on school meals, are immensely affected by the food crisis. Teachers who witness the impact of this crisis are equally stressed as they see children struggle to concentrate in class and other children sharing their meager meals. Hence, my plea for the ministers to intervene urgently.

Dr Nelson Mandela once said; “There can be no keener revelation of society than the way it treats its children.” I further appeal to all sectors of society to also make a contribution. This include institutions such as the World Food Programmes, NGOs, private sector and communities, to mention a few.