Shal­iza?Has­sanali

From to­day, the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme (SFP) will serve stu­dents juices that con­tains less sug­ar.

This de­ci­sion was tak­en by Cab­i­net on Thurs­day.

Con­fir­ma­tion came from Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia yes­ter­day, as he gave some of the mea­sures his min­istry will em­bark up­on for the new school term in 2017.

There are 455 pri­ma­ry and 125 sec­ondary schools in T&T. The coun­try's stu­dent pop­u­la­tion is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200,000 pupils.

"On­ly on Thurs­day at a meet­ing of Cab­i­net...Cab­i­net ac­cept­ed a rec­om­men­da­tion from the Min­istry of Health, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, where we are rec­om­mend­ing that ex­ces­sive sug­ars should be re­moved from the stu­dents' di­et. The juices the stu­dents will be giv­en will have a tremen­dous re­duc­tion of the sug­ar con­tent," Gar­cia said a tele­phone in­ter­view.

He said that the SFP's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Sta­cy Baron has al­ready been in­formed of the de­ci­sion tak­en by Cab­i­net, and she gave the as­sur­ance that things will be put in place for the new school term.

Gar­cia said many man­u­fac­tur­ers have al­ready start­ed de­creas­ing the lev­el of sug­ar in their juices, which was a step in the right di­rec­tion to a health­i­er lifestyle.

Ques­tioned if the Min­istry had any plans on clamp­ing down on school cafe­te­rias sell­ing soft drinks, Gar­cia said, this mat­ter would have to be dis­cussed.

"Be­cause of the num­ber of those ven­dors who sell they de­pend on that for their liveli­hood. We need to en­gage them in dis­cus­sions so that they will see the need to have a re­duc­tion of the lev­els of sug­ars."

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ents Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) Zena Ra­matali said key on its agen­da in 2017 for the as­so­ci­a­tion would be to lob­by for a ban of soft drinks in school.

Ra­matali said her as­so­ci­a­tion was look­ing at the health and wel­fare of the na­tion's chil­dren as a pri­or­i­ty.

"A lot of chil­dren now have men­tal health is­sues and obe­si­ty. The NPTA will be part­ner­ing with Min­istry of Healthy to look at lifestyle dis­eases and obe­si­ty."

At the NPTA's con­ven­tion in June, Ra­matali said these is­sues will be raised.

"I met with the Min­istry of Health be­fore Christ­mas and I know they have plans and have of­fered to work with us to re­duce and re­move sug­ary drinks from schools...and even from the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme," Ra­matali said.

How­ev­er, pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion Lyns­ley Doo­d­hai said the mat­ter of ban­ning soft drinks in schools had not been dis­cussed by the union's ex­ec­u­tive. Doo­d­hai said sev­er­al teach­ers al­ready en­cour­age their stu­dents not to con­sume snacks and drinks which are laced with sug­ar.