Durban - The KwaZulu-Natal ANC says it is monitoring the Schools Nutrition Programme, which has seen the provincial Department of Education and its MEC, Mbali Frazer, come under fire for failure to provide food to pupils in recent weeks.

The party’s provincial secretary, Bheki Mtolo, told the Sunday Tribune that they would not be firing Frazer, despite pupils at more than 5 000 schools in the province going without food after returning from the Easter holidays.

Although the department has announced that the situation had been resolved, Mtolo said that they were continuing to monitor the programme to see how it fares in the near future.

“If nothing improves we will issue further directives to the MEC to look at the best options to sort out the situation, which may include exploring all available mechanisms with the law, which may include cancellation of the contract,” Mtolo said.

Mtolo said that he and ANC KZN chairperson Siboniso Duma had summoned Frazer to explain what had led to the situation. He said she explained that they had taken a decision as a department to have one central supplier to supply food to schools because some of the challenges that they faced in recent years were that smaller suppliers had ended up not being able to do the job and deviating from the department’s specifications.

He said that there were specifications for the type of products that the department wanted the schoolchildren to consume in order to aid their growth and development, and this was one of the reasons for the department to have a single central supplier.

He added that the challenge for smaller suppliers was that they could not negotiate prices, and did not have bargaining capacity, whereas a single supplier was able to go directly to manufacturers instead of buying from retailers, like smaller suppliers.

“Because of this, when prices increase they end up eating into the profits of the smaller suppliers, and they end up deviating from the department’s specifications and you find that the nutritional value of the food decreases.

They went for one central supplier because they would be able to negotiate with suppliers because they would be buying in bulk and would be able to negotiate a fixed price in bulk so that the children get nutritious food, not just for them to get any food,” Mtolo said.

He said Fraser had told him and Duma that in accordance with the department’s plans, they had sought to give the central supplier or service provider three months to get their logistics in order to be ready to deliver. However, the supplier only received a letter of appointment from the department on March 23. Therefore, had only two weeks to organise logistics to get the food to schools.

“This led to the supplier having problems in the following weeks, but there is stability now because many schools have now received food, although there are hiccups here and there. Hence we have asked the MEC for a full report to present to Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube.

“When Dube-Ncube receives this report, she will go to the leaders of political parties represented in the provincial legislature to report to them on the challenges they are facing and how they are fixing them,” Mtolo said.

In her 2023/24 budget speech this week, Frazer announced a sum of R2.089 billion as the grant allocation for the National Schools Nutrition Programme, after it received a R120.9million increase. “This will ensure that 2 445 466 pupils from 5 446 schools are provided with balanced nutritious breakfast and lunch meals every day,” Frazer said.

When quizzed whether they would be showing Frazer the door for the bungle, Mtolo said: “Any big project, when it’s introduced, has its inherent challenges. Surely you have faced some challenges or the other in your world of work and you were not fired at your first shortfall. That’s not how real life works in the real world.”

SUNDAY TRIBUNE