The plea from the department falls in line with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement last week Thursday on the temporary closure of schools and the extension of the school academic year, due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Ramaphosa stressed in his address that the Basic Education Department’s National School Nutrition Programme, which caters for close to 700 000 disadvantaged learners in the Free State alone, will continue irrespective of the brief school break. When the country first entered level five lockdown in late March, schools were placed on what seemed to be an indefinite break at that stage, with human rights advocacy groups like Equal Education and Section 24 demanding that the nutrition programme continue, in light of beneficiaries’ disadvantaged backgrounds. 

The human rights advocacy groups, along with several Limpopo School Governing Bodies, took Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga and company to book, legally, to ensure the millions of children benefiting from the programme continue to be fed.

The Free State Education Department, led by MEC Tate Makgoe - who is at present Covid-19 positive - assures the public that all the stipulated guidelines and protocols will be followed in preparing the meals and disseminating them to the learners. It was revealed during the tabling of the provincial education department’s budget, in Makgoe’s absence last week Friday, that over R431 000 has been allocated for the sole purpose of keeping the feeding programme going. 

The Department of Small Business Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs (DESTEA) MEC, Makalo Mohale, who delivered the speech on behalf of Makgoe, said that all essentials meant to ensure that schools are compliant with Covid-19 regulations when carrying out the programme, in the from of sanitisers, masks and protective equipment, have been provided to schools to be utilised by Voluntary Food Handlers (VFHs) when preparing meals for the learners. The department has further “appointed 3 446 VFHs for ten months and they would receive a stipend of R1 360 per person, per month with effect from 1 June 2020 to 31 March 2021,” says Mohale.

OFM News