GOVT’S E29M FOR PUPILS’ FOOD

MBABANE – Following reports of hunger among pupils, government has sprung into action by releasing E29 million to purchase food for distribution in the country’s schools.

Pat Muir, the Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Training said, “Food supplies will be ready for distribution before the end of next week, and suppliers have assured the ministry of the availability of the required quantities under the circumstances.”
It is yet unclear how the food will be distributed but the PS said they were fine-tuning the distribution plan.

“We want to get the food to schools as fast as possible,” he said, while also stating that, “the ministry will implement its effective distribution plan to accelerate the delivery of food in schools.”
Muir also disclosed that the ministry was working with the National Emergency Response Council on HIV and AIDS (NERCHA), with whom they have a long standing agreement on the procurement of food supplies for schools.
Muir said the E29 million will under the stewardship of NERCHA ‘because they are the ones who are buying the food for us’.

For more comprehensive details on the food distribution, the PS referred inquiries to NERCHA Director Khanya Mabuza, who said the delay in having the food available was caused by the delay in releasing the funding.
He said the tender for the food supplies was issued but, because of the delayed funding from government, they have had to re-tender since the procurement terms have also changed.
“The challenge now is that we need to re-tender and that is what we have been busy with the whole of yesterday and Friday night. We issued the tender for the food, so unfortunately there was a delay in the money being released, so the procurement terms have changed.

There is also the whole issue of the quality of the food, because we can issue the tender say tomorrow but we have to ensure that the beans are real beans and the oil is proper oil, but we will try our best to manage the situation,” Mabuza said.
Asked if they had a tentative figure for the tender costs considering that they have had to make a re-valuation he said, “we hope we will be within the E29 million.”
The NERCHA Director said they were hoping to start distributing the food by Thursday but not all schools would get the supplies on that day.
“The food now has to be distributed at the same time, so there is the issue of logistics because we can’t have more than 200 trucks being dispatched to all the schools at the same time, thus we have to look at the issue of logistics management. It may not be all the schools but we will try to reach as many as possible,” he said

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