By Zine George
Thousands of pupils in the Eastern Cape are still going without their daily bread - more than two weeks after the education department announced it had hired 56 companies to supply food to schools.
When the Daily Dispatch contacted various schools in the province on Tuesday, it found that some schools had only received food once since the beginning of the month. Others are still waiting for the delivery of their daily bread.
It also emerged that the education department was forced to ask major bakeries to deliver bread to a number of schools in an attempt to supply them.
Pupils at schools in remote areas like Ngqamakhwe in Butterworth had only received school food once, while in Port Elizabeth and Dutywa local bakeries stepped in to rescue the situation.
Lukhanyo Primary School principal in Ngqamakhwe, Bongiswa Mona, said pupils were leaving her school to join other local schools, as her school had received bread only once since schools reopened.
"What angers teachers most is that no education official (has) even bothered to inform us what is happening. When the bread suppliers came for the first time last Wednesday, they did not even introduce themselves. They just pushed the loaves of bread into one open classroom. This is very unprofessional," said Mona.
The situation in Port Elizabeth is made even worse by the fact that seven of the eight suppliers that serve the district are from East London.
Bulelwa Mfazwe, an education department official based in the office of the Port Elizabeth district nutrition co-ordinator, confirmed that last week they had to hire Star Bakery to deliver bread to schools because their East London suppliers failed to deliver food.
"The situation was very bad, so we had to come up with a back-up plan for all our schools," said Mfazwe.
Dutywa district co-ordinator for nutrition Mhlangabezi Sontlaba confirmed that the feeding scheme was not running smoothly.
"Three of the eight schools we visited reported they did not receive food last week. There are problems but we are working on them," said Sontlaba.
Education Department spokesperson Loyiso Pulumani admitted that the programme "was faced with acute challenges".
"But it is largely because we did not give suppliers time to prepare. It is also true that in some areas major bakeries were asked to supply food last week because some suppliers were expecting that the department would secure supplies for them, which is not the case," he said.
Pulumani said the provincial co-ordinator was compiling a report yesterday, on "all the teething problems".
"We will update you in due course," said Pulumani. - Inet-Bridge