Durban - A top official from the office of the KwaZulu-Natal Premier will lead an investigation into the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP), which has teetered on the brink of collapse.
Addressing the community of uThukela District during the commemoration of Freedom Day yesterday, Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube said her office wanted to know what had gone wrong with the programme to avoid a similar occurrence in the future.
“What we want to assure the public is that this leadership of the province is doing all it can to restore normality in this situation. We have assigned advocate Linda Zama to do a thorough investigation of what went wrong, where did this project derail so that we never make any similar mistake,” she said.
She added that they would work with the Department of Basic Education to resolve the matter.
After three weeks, the Department of Education announced in a circular that the contract entered into with the sole supplier had been terminated, and it had reverted to the old system where individual suppliers serviced schools.
The department was forced to revert to this old system following mounting public anger after scores of schools in the province did not receive their food supplies, with pupils forced to attend lessons with empty stomachs.
The contract is worth R2 billion and serves more than 5 000 schools and two million pupils. This sheer scale of work overwhelmed the supplier who struggled to deliver supplies to schools.
The circular released by the department read: “Following the withdrawal of Pacina retail from the NSNP (National School Nutrition Programme) private label programme, the department is invoking clause 8.2.6 of the amended NSNP policy which states that: Where the private label programme defaults, or experiences challenges on non-compliance which causes non-feeding, the department shall revert to the old method of supply and delivery of food items to schools - using service providers of each cluster to supply and deliver food procured from any cash and carry store.”
It said the suppliers were advised that they would supply and deliver food items to the cluster of schools where they have been awarded as of Tuesday.
One of the suppliers, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal, said they were thrilled by the decision.
“We saw the circular and we are happy that the work will revert back to its owners,” she said.
Asked about the work they had done so far under the new supplier, she said they had filed their claims for the delivery and believed the department would compensate them for the work already done.
IFP leader Velenkosini Hlabisa said they had seen the circular and it was what the party had called for.
“We had said that the main contractor should be terminated as the contractor had failed to deliver on the mandate to deliver food.”
ActionSA provincial leader Zwakele Mncwango said the party welcomed the decision made by Pacina Retail Pty LTD to pull out from the school feeding scheme programme.
“While we welcome the company’s decision to pull out from the tender, we cannot allow the matter to fizzle out after causing great dysfunction among thousands of schools and millions of lives. We hope that an announcement of a forensic investigation into the matter by an independent body will soon follow.”