RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath has said he will fol­low up on al­le­ga­tions that lizards were found in­side roti sup­plied by a Freeport ro­ti­mak­er to the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme two weeks ago.

The con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed roti was in­ter­cept­ed be­fore it could be dis­trib­uted to schools in Cen­tral Trinidad, a source con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia.

The source said on No­vem­ber 11, cater­ers op­er­at­ing un­der the Na­tion­al School Di­etary Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (NS­D­SL) re­port­ed re­ceiv­ing paratha roti that con­tained what staff iden­ti­fied as lizards em­bed­ded with­in the lay­ers of the dough from the Freeport sup­pli­er. Cater­ing staff dis­cov­ered the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion dur­ing rou­tine prepa­ra­tion and im­me­di­ate­ly stopped us­ing the prod­uct. NS­D­SL of­fi­cials were no­ti­fied, the source claimed.

The lizards ap­peared to have been in­cor­po­rat­ed dur­ing the dough-mak­ing process and had been em­bed­ded in the flour. Pho­tos were sup­plied to Guardian Me­dia.

The source said cater­ers al­so not­ed pre­vi­ous san­i­tary and op­er­a­tional is­sues with the sup­pli­er, in­clud­ing a sus­pen­sion re­lat­ed to the fa­cil­i­ty’s wa­ter sup­ply.

“De­spite this, the sup­pli­er con­tin­ues to pro­vide paratha roti to school feed­ing kitchens in the north, east, and cen­tral re­gions of Trinidad,” the source added.

Un­der the cur­rent NS­D­SL pol­i­cy, cater­ers are re­quired to use ap­proved sup­pli­ers and can­not re­ject or re­place items sourced through these chan­nels.

“As a re­sult, they re­main vul­ner­a­ble to rep­u­ta­tion­al and op­er­a­tional con­se­quences aris­ing from sup­pli­er-re­lat­ed ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties de­spite hav­ing no con­trol over the sup­pli­er’s pro­duc­tion en­vi­ron­ment,” the source claimed.

The source not­ed that cater­ers have not been in­formed of any sus­pen­sion, in­ves­ti­ga­tion, or cor­rec­tive ac­tion in re­la­tion to the in­ci­dent.

“The sup­pli­er con­tin­ues to dis­trib­ute roti to school feed­ing kitchens, where meals are pre­pared dai­ly for stu­dents in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools na­tion­wide,” the source added.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Dr Dowlath said the min­istry will fol­low up on the re­ports.

Mean­while, Chair­man of the Board of Di­rec­tors for NS­D­SL, Raf­fi­ana Ali Boodoos­ingh, told Guardian Me­dia she too was un­aware of the in­ci­dent.

“I’m now hear­ing about that,” she said, adding that no re­port had been made to the board. When asked about over­sight sys­tems and why the sup­pli­er had not been sus­pend­ed or in­ves­ti­gat­ed, she said, “I’ll have to get back to you on that be­cause I don’t have any in­fo on that. I’ll have to do my in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

NS­D­SL pro­vides school feed­ing for over 140,000 chil­dren dai­ly, which in­cludes ap­prox­i­mate­ly 62,768 break­fasts and 76,914 lunch­es. This pro­gramme aims to im­prove the nu­tri­tion, health, and ed­u­ca­tion­al out­comes for stu­dents in pub­lic schools.