Durban - Food suppliers under the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) said yesterday their plans to deliver food to schools were on track.
One supplier said she was finalising her deliveries to a school in uMlazi in preparation for pupils returning today, following the long weekend break.
She is one of many suppliers who have been re-appointed by the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education to supply individual schools. The suppliers buy food according to the menu prescribed by the department, and deliver it to schools.
The department was forced to go back to this system after a new system resulted in a host of challenges.
Under the new system, it had appointed one supplier, Pacina Retail, for the whole province. This meant existing suppliers in the programme were tasked only with picking up food from distribution points and delivering it to schools. However, complaints arose over the distances between pick-up points and schools, as well as the quality and quantity of food available.
Despite the department last week announcing – in a circular – that it was reverting back to its old system, Pacina Retail released a statement at the weekend claiming the contract was still in force and it intended to honour it.
In its statement, Pacina said: “Pacina would like to set the record straight regarding recent unfounded rumours and misleading allegations of the collapse of the programme. We understand the concerns of the public and want to clarify that the infancy glitches experienced due to logistical challenges during the first two days of the programme were quickly resolved and did not ‘collapse’ the programme.”
“Since April 14, Pacina had continued to deliver food to the agreed collection points of all 12 districts of the province, where 1 765 SMMEs were then to collect and deliver it to 5 446 schools.
“It is not true that we failed to deliver; in fact, over 2 400 tons of non-perishable/dry foods and over 3 000 tons of perishable foods were delivered to those collection points.
“As the contract remains in place, we are committed to fulfilling our obligation to deliver food to all the collection points, and want to emphasise at this point that we did not terminate the contract between the parties. To date, the contract remains binding and in force.
“We have, during this time, noted the false reports of the delivery of sub-standard food by Pacina, and would like to place on record that at no point did we deliver rotten food/produce to the collection points. The allegations, simply put, are completely unfounded.”
On payment for its service, Pacina said it wanted to put on record and emphasise it had not received a single payment from the department.
The provincial government in a statement last night said Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube, along with the Education MEC Mbali Frazer and the leader of government business and Economic Development MEC Siboniso Duma would embark on oversight visits at schools today to assess the rollout of the school feeding scheme programme.
The statement did not divulge which system was in place to deliver food to schools but instead said a monitoring and reporting tool would be used to assess the programme and provide rapid interventions where necessary.