Durban — The IFP in KwaZulu-Natal has given Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube seven days to immediately suspend the KZN school feeding scheme’s main supplier and reinstate previous suppliers, pending the outcome of an investigation.
This follows serious failures with the scheme that have left many pupils without food.
At a media briefing in Durban on Monday, IFP president Velenkosini Hlabisa said it was important the premier make a bold move and suspend the services of the main contractor, as it had become clear pupils were still going hungry despite several announcements that everything was back to normal.
Hlabisa said his party had gone on a fact-finding tour around the province to assess whether food was being delivered, as was claimed by the provincial government. However, they had found the claims – that the situation was returning to normal – to be “lies”.
Hlabisa said they had also discovered there was a cover-up by the Department of Education to protect the main contractor.
He said food was not being delivered to schools. The principals at some schools had apparently informed the IFP they were told to cook a little food and save it for the following day so that it would look like pupils were eating every day.
“The situation has gone from bad to worse, which is why we are making a call to the premier to take an unpopular decision to suspend the services of the main contractor to save kids from dying in classrooms because of hunger.
“It is not good to gamble with the lives of poor pupils. Urgent steps are needed to save the province from another disaster where pupils will collapse and die in schools,” said Hlabisa.
The IFP suggested that if the main contractor could not be suspended, the premier should shut down schools while sorting out the problem because the feeding scheme was clearly failing.
The IFP also called for an independent forensic investigation into how the company was awarded the tender since the party had not seen any advertisement for it.
The premier’s spokesperson, Bongi Gwala, said the premier would respond once she had seen the IFP statement. The feeding scheme bungle, which is expected to cost the ANC politically, has also drawn criticism from Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga, who wrote a letter to provincial MEC Mbali Frazer demanding to know how the tender was awarded.
Motshekga said a team from the national office was in the province to investigate the causes of the failures.
However, the IFP said the suspect cannot investigate himself.
The lucrative multimillion-rand tender was scored by the company Pacina, which belongs to former AmaZulu Football Club director Manzini Zungu. The budget for the programme in the province is more than R2 billion. It caters for 2.4 million pupils.
Speaking to the Daily News on Sunday, Zungu said there was a well-calculated campaign by certain politicians who had organised community forums to block the delivery of food items to schools so it would look like he was failing in his job.
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