Pretoria - The Provincial Department of Education will ensure that more than 1 500 000 learners dependent on the National School Nutrition Programme continue to benefit despite still being on holiday.
The department said it had opened schools so that up to 1 545 562 learners would be able to start collecting food parcels between 10am and noon, with transport provided for those in need.
The initiative will run until February 12, after which normal feeding programmes at the relevant schools will resume when the academic year starts on February 15.
The Equal Education Law Centre had raised concerns surrounding the department’s failure to provide clear plans for resuming the school nutrition programme.
With learners being forced to remain at home for much longer than expected because of the Covid-19 second wave, the organisation had accused the department of delaying the feeding scheme.
“To provide school meals only when classrooms reopen on February 15 would have gone against the spirit of a July 2020 court order, which confirmed that the department must provide meals for learners even when they do not attend school.
“For many learners, the meal that they receive from the school is their only guaranteed meal of the day, and so many learners received their last regular meal when schools closed on December 15.
“Having learners waiting on schools to reopen to eat would have meant that learners would be going without nutritious meals from school for eight weeks - double the length of the usual school holiday,” said Tad Khosa, spokesperson for the Equal Education Law Centre.
Khosa said their organisation would be continuing discussions with the organising committee and getting feedback from the ground as to the validity of the plans.
He said this was due to the conflicting arrangements being gathered from the various departments.
Another issue they wanted to verify was whether learners were indeed getting transport in order to collect the meals as announced. “The right to basic education and the right of children to basic nutrition are interconnected and are unqualified rights that must be immediately realised.
“This means the government cannot say it does not have the resources (such as money) for these rights to be realised, and cannot delay its duty to ensure that learners’ rights to basic education and basic nutrition are met.”
Pretoria News