As schools fret over the inability to feed their pupils, education officials have apologised and promised that the money due to them for the school feeding scheme will be in by Monday next week.
The delay in the school nutrition programme payments is unforgivable. It affects the most vulnerable.
The national scheme feeds impoverished pupils in poorer schools and is, for many, the only meal of the day.
Since the beginning of the second term in April, thousands of children in the Eastern Cape have been denied this sustenance, the Weekend Post reported at the weekend.
Agonised teachers have had to watch as some of the most extreme cases collapse from hunger. In these instances, they have selflessly put their hands in their own pockets to give the children something to eat.
Some schools had small cash reserves that they dipped into to buy food for the pupils, but that money has run out.
It will be a week before the money reflects in the schools’ accounts — if the promise holds true.
A week to the department is not a long time; a week to a starving child could be a matter of life or death.
Bay teachers say the mental and physical wellbeing of pupils has already been affected.
Provincial education deputy director-general Ray Tywakadi, though apologising for the delay in the payments, has partly blamed schools for not updating the required information in time.
The DA, however, blames the delay in capturing the data on staff shortages and lack of measures to lessen the effect of the load-shedding disruptions.
Education spokesperson Malibongwe Mtima said on Friday: “This wasn’t really a delay, but we wanted to ensure that the schools and the department had a clean database, so we have verified all the pupils at schools using their ID numbers.
“The National Treasury picked up there was duplication of pupils and we wanted to avoid ghost pupils.”
At the end of the day, the reasons don’t matter. What matters is that children are starving as a result of the payments holdup.
Whatever checks needed to be done should have been done before the children returned to school and well before the payments were due.
No child should ever suffer because of official inefficiencies or ineptitude. These payments must be effected with greater urgency.
That children are starving while officials dilly-dally is absolutely shameful.
HeraldLIVE