KwaZulu-Natal premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube says there is enough food for all school-going children, even though the food supplied in some schools would not last a week.
Dube-Ncube said this could be a strategy by the provincial education department not to give out “too much supplies”.
“They don’t give them bulk perishables also, because they can’t last a long time. In certain schools we have already heard that the service providers have gone to get supplies where there were shortages of food. So, we are looking at that, but in our report that we are compiling ... we will be able to see where there are still challenges and how we deal with them immediately,” she said on Tuesday.
“For now we are comfortable work is continuing, and for this week, at least, children will have enough food, but we will keep on monitoring.”
Dube-Ncube was speaking at Olwambeni Primary School in Pinetown on Tuesday, where provincial government representatives visited schools across 10 districts to monitor the rollout of the National Schools Nutrition Programme.
“We want to make sure we get first-hand information on what is going on and whether there are any problems because since last week we’ve had different reports from schools and service providers,” she said.
The implementation of the Schools Nutrition Programme in KZN has been in the spotlight after reports of the botched R2.1bn tender awarded to Pacina Retail to provide food supplies to 5,444 KZN schools.
The company and the education department have been at loggerheads after the latter sent a termination letter to Pacina Retail and asked other service providers to deliver directly to schools.
Meanwhile the company said they it wanted payment for the service it said it had already rendered before the Easter holidays.
Dube-Ncube said they were now investigating what happened and who was responsible.
“We have established various teams to work on matter: we have a finance working stream, a communications stream, we’ve got a legal team, an operations team, we have a monitoring and evaluating team,” she said.
“All these teams are working towards ensuring that all boxes are ticked. Legal teams are working on legalities of the whole contract — not just the termination, but they’re looking at the contractual agreement and whether those agreements were breached or not. From there we will get a report on the way forward.”
In response to reports the company was continuing its work despite the termination letter, Dube-Ncube said this was news to government since the company had conceded it had not delivered what was expected.
“It is our expectation that since we have started with this new process we should not be getting companies saying they are doing something over and above what we have put in place. The department of education wrote a formal letter indicating it would terminate and work in the terms of those terminations. We are clear that company breached contract.”
The premier commented on the ongoing SIU investigation: “We were not aware that the investigation started months ago. We have pledged our support and asked that the department co-operate fully. Any documentation will be provided to institutions ... On the basis of information [currently at hand] we believe that somebody didn’t do something right, and there has to be consequences for anybody who had a lapse.”
Meanwhile, Nokuthokoza Hlatshwayo, a cook at Dick Ndlovu Primary school, told TimesLIVE Premium the food delivery contract was scheduled to start in April.
“We were told there would be a supplier who would deliver food to cook for every week, but that never happened. We were told things had changed, so since we started we would come to school but have nothing to cook until we left,” she said.
She said previously, they would receive supplies that were expected to last up to eight days but never did. She said supplies delivered on Tuesday would not last the school’s 1,000 pupils a week.
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