Durban — The DA has welcomed the Minister of Basic Education, Siviwe Gwarube’s decision to stop the issuing of a R9.8 billion tender which would have centralised procurement for the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) under a single provider. Gwarube had stopped the tender for investigations by legal teams on corruption allegations.
In a statement, DA national spokesperson Karabo Khakhau stated that the DA has faith that Minister Gwarube will use the information gleaned from her investigation to ensure that all provinces are held accountable for their NSNPs and to ensure that learners do not have to go to school hungry.
“Each province currently administers its own NSNP, which provides at least one meal a day to more than 9.6 million learners. Last year both the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal left thousands of learners without meals; and just two weeks ago, the DA in Gauteng uncovered that thousands of learners were either going hungry or being fed substandard meals due to concerns regarding a R1 billion tender. Cadres cannot eat while children starve,” Khakhau said.
Khakhau also said that for many learners, their NSNP meals are the only meals they receive in a day. With South Africa’s high rate of malnutrition and stunting, the successful implementation of the NSNP is crucial, Khakhau said.
She further said that while it is clear that various provinces have been struggling to manage their NSNP programmes and provide learners with nutritious meals, centralisation is hardly the answer. Instead, the struggling provinces should learn from those provinces that successfully manage to provide nutritious meals.
The National School Nutrition Programme, which according to the Department of Education website is the government programme that provides one nutritious meal to all learners in poorer primary and secondary schools. The objective is to provide nutritious meals to learners so as to improve their ability to learn.
The programme also teaches learners and parents how to lead a healthy lifestyle, and promotes the development of school vegetable gardens.
In her budget vote speech for the 2024/25 financial year, Gwarube stated that the overall 2024/25 Medium‐Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) budget allocation for the Department of Basic Education is R32.3 billion – an increase of 7.4% from the 2023/24 overall allocation.
The breakdown of the budget by Education Programme, is as follows:
The overall allocation for Conditional Grants is R26.041bn – an increase of 10.4% from that of 2023/24. The specific allocations for Conditional Grants are as follows
- The National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) has been allocated R9.798bn, an increase of 5.6% from the 2023/24 allocation.
- The Learners with Severe to Profound Intellectual Disabilities Grant receives R278.9 million, an increase of 7.1% from the 2023/24 allocation.
However, in a recent report by the department, the programme was experiencing budget constraints in April this year, and was not enough to feed the growing number of learners in KwaZulu-Natal.
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