SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

The hard­ships brought about by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic have seen a re­quest for 7,000 ex­tra meals through the School Nu­tri­tion Pro­gramme (SNP).

There has been a de­mand for ad­di­tion­al meals pro­vid­ed at break­fast and lunch since schools re­opened on April 19, as many par­ents have lost their jobs while oth­ers had their work hours cut. Cit­i­zens are al­so fac­ing ris­ing food prices and the high cost of liv­ing, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for some of them to pro­vide for their chil­dren.

This has put an ad­di­tion­al strain on the Na­tion­al Schools Di­etary Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (NS­D­SL), which pro­vid­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 133,000 meals for break­fast and lunch for stu­dents across the coun­try dai­ly, and now has to bump that fig­ure up to 140,000.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100,000 stu­dents in 800 schools ben­e­fit dai­ly from the meals.

Sev­er­al cater­ers claimed the in­creased de­mand came from schools in rur­al dis­tricts in­clud­ing Cu­mu­to, Tamana, Coryal and San Rafael. In the East, schools in San Juan, Curepe and La Hor­quet­ta have al­so signed up for more meals.

Re­quests al­so poured in from schools in San Fer­nan­do and Port-of-Spain.

The NS­D­SL is now brac­ing for a fur­ther in­crease in the re­quest for meals when the new aca­d­e­m­ic term starts in Sep­tem­ber.

The NS­D­SL has al­ready seen a dras­tic cut in its al­lo­ca­tion in the last year. From a $224 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion in 2019, that fig­ure dropped to $200 mil­lion in 2020 and $41 mil­lion in 2021.

With the dras­tic cut to the NS­D­SL’s bud­get, the ques­tion is, how would the cater­ers meet the ad­di­tion­al de­mand for meals while ad­her­ing to rec­om­mend­ed di­etary al­lowance?

Due to the fi­nan­cial con­straints faced by the NS­D­SL and the 68 cater­ers be­ing paid the same rates to con­tin­ue the pro­gramme, a de­ci­sion was tak­en to cut out bot­tled wa­ter for stu­dents. Fruits, main­ly ba­nanas, are no longer served with break­fast meals due to the un­avail­abil­i­ty of sup­ply.

The meals pro­vid­ed to pre-school­ers in Ear­ly Child­hood Care Ed­u­ca­tion(EC­CE) cen­tres in­clud­ing stu­dents in pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary, vo­ca­tion­al/tech­ni­cal and spe­cial schools have be­come a life­line to vul­ner­a­ble and needy fam­i­lies.

Schools want more

Con­firm­ing the in­crease in re­quests for meals to Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed last week were of­fi­cials of the La Hor­quet­ta North Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry, San Rafael RC Pri­ma­ry and South East Port-of-Spain Sec­ondary schools.

At La Hor­quet­ta, their meals moved from 160 when schools closed in March of 2020 to 230 this term. The school has 500 stu­dents.

An of­fi­cial at the school said they ex­pect­ed the num­bers to in­crease be­cause a lot of par­ents in the com­mu­ni­ty are low-in­come earn­ers who were thrown on the bread­line dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

While the re­quest for ad­di­tion­al meals is be­ing met by the SNP, the of­fi­cial ob­served that the qual­i­ty of the meals has dropped and the por­tions have al­so been re­duced.

“Now you don’t get a thigh or leg in the meal but pieces of meat. The chil­dren used to get wa­ter with their food but not any­more.”

At San Rafael RC Pri­ma­ry the fig­ures rose from 25 to 40 meals. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 129 chil­dren are en­rolled at this school.

Be­fore the pan­dem­ic, the school weed­ed out some stu­dents whose par­ents were abus­ing the pro­gramme. “We have a strin­gent process where we se­lect on­ly the needy cas­es,” a school of­fi­cial said.

South East Port-of-Spain Sec­ondary has seen its num­bers jump from 51 to 75.

“The re­quest for the ad­di­tion­al meals was made to a guy on Mon­day. We men­tioned to him about in­creas­ing to 75. And af­ter that he nev­er came back,” the of­fi­cial said.

A well-placed source at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion con­firmed that there has been a re­quest for an ad­di­tion­al 7,000 meals.

“The NS­D­SL will have to make some tough de­ci­sions for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year in Sep­tem­ber as it is an­tic­i­pat­ed the de­mand for the meals will sky-rock­et fur­ther giv­en what is cur­rent­ly tak­ing place with ris­ing in­fla­tion.”

Cater­ers un­der pres­sure

Mean­while, the sit­u­a­tion is putting ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on the cater­ers who are al­ready strug­gling.

On Thurs­day, two cater­ers who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty ad­mit­ted that the sit­u­a­tion has been frus­trat­ing as they are faced with ris­ing food and fu­el prices and the cur­rent low rates they re­ceive for each meal.

Cater­ers are paid $6.63, $9.00 and $8.28 for break­fast, lunch and preschool meals re­spec­tive­ly.

The East-based cater­er said re­sum­ing op­er­a­tions af­ter two years of school clo­sures has been tough and chal­leng­ing.

For starters, he said, sup­pli­ers no longer of­fer him cred­it. The banks are al­so re­luc­tant to give an over­draft and he had to send home 13 of their 19 work­ers, many of whom were sin­gle par­ents.

“This is the worst we have seen in years. I am now chief cook, bot­tle wash­er and dri­ver be­cause we can no longer pay our staff. It’s frus­trat­ing.”

Dur­ing the lock­down mea­sures, the cater­er said, he still had to pay his bills, ser­vice his loans and main­tain his ve­hi­cles and equip­ment with no in­come com­ing in. “It was a bit­ter pill to swal­low,” he said.

In re­cent times, he said, reg­u­lar sup­pli­ers have al­so been short on cer­tain food items forc­ing him to pur­chase else­where at high­er prices.

“All this is killing us, but we can­not turn our backs on these chil­dren who de­pend on the meals be­cause this is all they would eat for the day as many par­ents are no longer em­ployed be­cause of the state of the econ­o­my and what COVID did to us. This is the re­al­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion,” he added.

An­oth­er cater­er stat­ed that the ris­ing cost of food cou­pled with last month’s hike in fu­el prices have been eat­ing in­to his prof­its which ranged be­tween 18 to 20 per cent be­fore COVID.

“Now, I am just break­ing even af­ter cov­er­ing my over­head costs.”

The ad­di­tion­al ex­pens­es in these dif­fi­cult times, the cater­er point­ed out, have been a hard blow for him.

“Es­pe­cial­ly when the rates of the meals have re­mained the same for years. I have to ab­sorb the ad­di­tion­al costs. We are try­ing our best to get by. It comes like you are do­ing char­i­ty be­cause some of the meals we served we make ab­solute­ly noth­ing on it. We can­not con­tin­ue with the cur­rent pay­ments.”

In Feb­ru­ary, the NS­D­SL had put for­ward a pro­pos­al to in­crease the cater­ers’ rates. How­ev­er, no in­crease was ap­proved.

The cater­er said he was forced to lay off six of his 18 work­ers this term even though schools have been re­quest­ing more meals since class­es re­sumed.

“A lot of prin­ci­pals are com­plain­ing they are not get­ting enough meals to take care of their chil­dren. There are a lot of schools who were not added to the pro­gramme when we restart­ed.”

The cater­er said long ago some par­ents used to turn up their noses or heap scorn when the dis­cus­sion of box lunch came up. Box­es of lunch would al­so be dumped in the garbage at the schools by stu­dents.

“These very peo­ple are now re­quest­ing the meals for their chil­dren be­cause of hard times. In some schools as soon as break­fast or lunch reach­es and you turn your back every­thing is gone.”

In 2018, then ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia re­vealed that 6,000 meals pre­pared for chil­dren were wast­ed every day. Mea­sures were put in place to deal with the is­sue re­sult­ing in the min­istry sav­ing $5 mil­lion a year.

Meals are a life­line

A stone’s throw from Low­er Cu­mu­to Pri­ma­ry School, one par­ent who with­held her iden­ti­ty ad­mit­ted that she re­lied heav­i­ly on the meals for her nine-year-old daugh­ter, who she de­scribed as an ex­cel­lent stu­dent.

She said with the down­turn in the econ­o­my her food busi­ness has tak­en a nose­dive.

“Peo­ple are not or­der­ing any more. Sales have gone to the ground. I am bare­ly mak­ing a dol­lar, so I have to de­pend on the box lunch for my child oth­er­wise she would go hun­gry.”

To her, the meal is crit­i­cal for her child’s sur­vival, growth and de­vel­op­ment.

Dur­ing the day, the moth­er of three goes door-to-door in the Waller­field com­mu­ni­ty to take or­ders for meals. Many days she re­turns emp­ty-hand­ed.

Her hus­band, a taxi dri­ver, al­so earns next to noth­ing.

“It stress­es you out be­cause as par­ents you can’t pro­vide for your chil­dren who de­serve bet­ter.”

For sin­gle-par­ent Va­lene Desuze, who is strug­gling, the meals have be­come a life­line for her two chil­dren who at­tend Low­er Cu­mu­to Pri­ma­ry School.

“I was so hap­py when school re­opened be­cause my kids would get some­thing nu­tri­tious in their stom­achs. Hon­est­ly, the meals are a mo­ti­va­tion for them to go to school be­cause at home they on­ly get one meal a day. It is al­so their life­line.”

That meal at home, Desuze said, would be boiled rice.

“They are ac­cus­tomed to eat­ing the boiled rice so it does not re­al­ly both­er them. My chil­dren don’t have a choice, they have to eat what they get oth­er­wise they would starve. Bet­ter can’t be done,” the moth­er of three said.

She al­so ad­mit­ted that when there are left­over lunch box­es in school her chil­dren would bring them home for din­ner. “We would all share in the meal,” she said.

Desuze man­aged a small shop but due to a lack of fi­nances, it was shut down.

Hav­ing just come out of an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship, Desuze sur­vives on a $510 month­ly food card for a fam­i­ly of four.

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Desuze said, her chil­dren suf­fered for a prop­er meal.

“For those two years, my chil­dren strug­gled. Every day they kept ask­ing when school go­ing to open be­cause they were look­ing for­ward to the free meals.”

Tough de­ci­sions for the pro­gramme

 The biggest chal­lenge, the min­istry’s source said, is if Gov­ern­ment would be in a po­si­tion to sus­tain the num­ber of stu­dents in the pro­gramme in­clud­ing the new ap­pli­cants.

“We would have to make a de­ci­sion whether we will keep break­fast or just do one meal. So, if the cost goes up too much…there are a lot of dif­fer­ent op­tions. You will re­duce the num­ber of break­fast meals to the needy and just serve the lunch to the ones who are el­i­gi­ble. We have to look at what is go­ing to hap­pen in Sep­tem­ber.”

The source said the ma­jor­i­ty of the re­quests are from sec­ondary schools in the East, cit­ing Curepe and San Juan as two ar­eas.

“We are see­ing ar­eas where we nev­er had such big num­bers…chil­dren nu­tri­tion­al­ly have been starved.”

Schools in re­mote ar­eas are de­pen­dent on the meals, the source dis­closed. The source cit­ed Tamana as one area that re­lies heav­i­ly on free meals.

“The meals serve as an in­cen­tive for the chil­dren to at­tend school. Those ar­eas are re­al­ly de­pressed.”

Prin­ci­pals have been asked to as­sess the chil­dren by re­view­ing the forms their par­ents filled out. Stu­dents are se­lect­ed for meals by prin­ci­pals based on their par­ents’ so­cio-eco­nom­ic lev­els.

“These are some of the fac­tors that must be con­sid­ered,” the source added.

NS­D­SL’s CEO in Feb­ru­ary: We can­not pro­vide what we want

In Feb­ru­ary, the NS­D­SL ap­peared be­fore a Pub­lic Ac­counts En­ter­pris­es Com­mit­tee chaired by Wade Mark which delved in­to the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the pe­ri­od 2016 to 2019.

The com­mit­tee heard from NS­D­SL’s CEO Sta­cy Bar­ran that the pro­gramme pro­vides 79,000 lunch­es and 54,000 break­fast meals dai­ly to 800 schools at a cost of $1.2 mil­lion.

Pri­ma­ry school stu­dents are the largest con­sumers of these meals.

With the ad­vent of COVID-19, Bar­ran dis­closed the NS­D­SL had been faced with sev­er­al chal­lenges, main­ly the ris­ing cost of food and fi­nan­cial con­straints.

Bar­ran said cer­tain things were now be­yond the NS­D­SL’s con­trol.

How­ev­er, she said they were ful­ly pre­pared when schools re­sumed and had the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions for the meals as well.

“So, as a pro­gramme, we have to look at an in­crease in the price per box. Nowhere in Trinidad right now we can get a $6.63 break­fast meal that pro­vides a quar­ter of the rec­om­mend­ed di­etary al­lowance. It is a big chal­lenge when we look at the nu­tri­ents that we want to pro­vide and what we can pro­vide.”

Bar­ran said it had be­come “un­ten­able” to pay cater­ers these rates, and the board had asked for a re­view and rec­om­men­da­tions of the rates.

Bar­ran al­so re­vealed the NS­D­SL had to stop giv­ing stu­dents fruit with each break­fast meal. “With those fi­nan­cial con­straints we can­not pro­vide what we want,” she told the com­mit­tee.

Bar­ran in­formed the com­mit­tee that in 2019, the NS­D­SL’s bud­get was $224 mil­lion. By 2020 the fig­ure was re­duced to $200 mil­lion. In 2021, the sum was slashed to a pal­try $41 mil­lion.

From 2009 to 2013, the NS­D­SL ob­tained $1.7 bil­lion in gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions.

She said the on­ly so­lu­tion was to in­crease the price of the meals bear­ing in mind the ris­ing cost of in­fla­tion and oth­er fac­tors.

The NS­D­SL has looked at in­creas­ing the cost for each meal be­tween $1 and $1.25 for its 69 cater­ers and had en­gaged the Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion and Fi­nance on the mat­ter, the com­mit­tee heard.

“If we take the price of the meal up by $1 it would cost the pro­gramme (an ad­di­tion­al) $8 mil­lion for the year,” she dis­closed.

The source told Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed if there is an up­ward trend with food prices in the next fis­cal year they would have to go for an ad­di­tion­al in­crease “be­cause the $1 in­crease would not work out.”

A 2014 re­port of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al on a Spe­cial Au­dit of the School Nu­tri­tion Pro­gramme man­aged by the NS­D­SL stat­ed the cost of wastage may be in the vicin­i­ty of $38 mil­lion per school year.

Re­peat­ed calls to Bar­ran’s cell phone over the last week went unan­swered and she did not re­spond to What­sApp mes­sages on this mat­ter.

Ques­tions were sent to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Rodelle Phillip-Sim­mons.

The min­istry re­sponds:

How many cater­ers sup­ply meals to schools?

68 cater­ers sup­ply meals to schools. Four have not.

How many cater­ers left the pro­gramme due to fi­nan­cial con­straints or lack of fund­ing/pay­ments by the MOE?

Sev­en cater­ers no longer sup­ply meals to schools due to fi­nan­cial con­straints. There is no is­sue of lack of pay­ment to the cater­ers.

 How many peo­ple are em­ployed in the school feed­ing pro­gramme?

Cater­ers em­ploy at least 900 per­sons di­rect­ly.

 Is it true that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the new rates (for cater­ers) would cost the min­istry an ad­di­tion­al $8 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly?

That would de­pend on whether an in­crease is ap­proved and the quan­tum of the in­crease.

 See­ing that Gov­ern­ment has been try­ing to tight­en its belt and spend­ing, do you think the Fi­nance Min­istry will al­lo­cate this $8 mil­lion?

That ques­tion is bet­ter di­rect­ed to the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

  Is the $41 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tions suf­fi­cient, giv­en that the to­tal an­nu­al cost of meals for stu­dents pri­or to the pan­dem­ic was $104.7 mil­lion?

The bud­get was re­duced in 2021/2022 due to the clo­sure of schools and the re­duced cater­ing re­quired.

How is the NS­D­SL deal­ing with this sig­nif­i­cant short­fall in funds? Does this mean that cater­ers will have to cut back on meals or re­duce the size of their meals to work with the NS­D­SL’s sig­nif­i­cant­ly small­er bud­get? Or will some needy chil­dren be de­prived of a free meal?

In fis­cal 2021/2022, if a fur­ther al­lo­ca­tion is re­quired, it will be re­quest­ed of the MoE.

 Can you say if the NS­D­SL has had to slash the vol­ume of meals it pro­vid­ed to work with­in its slim­mer bud­get? If so, what per cent of the meals were cut and how has this im­pact­ed the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion?    

The NS­D­SL con­tin­ues to pro­vide meals to all el­i­gi­ble stu­dents who are out to phys­i­cal school at the cur­rent prices.

 How has this fi­nan­cial con­straint been af­fect­ing NS­D­SL? Has it put the NS­D­SL in a bind or lim­bo?

Where in­creased fund­ing is re­quired, it is re­quest­ed of the Min­istry of Fi­nance through the MoE.

 How long the NS­D­SL has been pro­vid­ing meals for stu­dents?

The School Nu­tri­tion Pro­gramme has been pro­vid­ing meals to the na­tion’s chil­dren for over 60 years.

Mil­lions in food sup­port dur­ing COVID

In 2020, the Gov­ern­ment dis­trib­uted a three-month sup­ply of mar­ket box­es in place of food cards to par­ents/guardians of the chil­dren reg­is­tered with the SNP.

Each par­ent/guardian re­ceived $250 in tem­po­rary food sup­port to cov­er the term from Oc­to­ber to De­cem­ber. This cost the State $29 mil­lion.

In ad­di­tion, al­most 4,000 food cards val­ued at $6.1 mil­lion were dis­trib­uted by MPs to house­holds with stu­dents who re­ceived meals un­der the SNP.

The $510 cards pro­vid­ed tem­po­rary sup­port for three months.

UNICEF: Chil­dren not re­ceiv­ing reg­u­lar meals have grown

On­ly last week, the Unit­ed Na­tions In­ter­na­tion­al Chil­dren’s Emer­gency Fund (UNICEF)ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Cather­ine Rus­sell in de­liv­er­ing re­marks at the launch of the 2022 Glob­al Re­port on Food Crises stat­ed as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic, “100 mil­lion more chil­dren are liv­ing in pover­ty and two-thirds of house­holds with chil­dren have lost in­come. The num­ber of chil­dren not re­ceiv­ing reg­u­lar meals has grown.”

To com­pound the sit­u­a­tion, Rus­sell added, ris­ing food prices have made a bad sit­u­a­tion worse.

The SNP meals help im­prove the stu­dents’ nu­tri­tion­al sta­tus as break­fast is de­signed to meet one-quar­ter of the Rec­om­mend­ed Dai­ly Al­lowance (RDA) while lunch­es meet one-third of the RDA.