Can you hear the growling inside children’s stomachs? - EDITORIAL

Schoolchildren going without their mid-day meal and the government announcing that there are no funds to pay suppliers, who provide the food, is a matter of concern. Suppliers providing meals to the schools have not been paid for the past two months, according to Education Minister Susil Premajayantha.

Such news is both irritating and troublesome because this means the decision makers, who played with the lives of adults, are doing the same with children; our future.
One foreign diplomat here in Sri Lanka once said that there is a disparity between what Sri Lankan authorities say and what they eventually do. Regarding this midday meal programme Jayantha, in this same capacity as Minister, said some time ago that the food programme for children must be doubled. Now it has stopped!

The little available, good news is that we’ve come to know that World Bank funds will be used to settle outstanding debts to suppliers of food to schools. It is always good to know that the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) has help coming from ‘the outside’ when it comes to garnering support for the school meal programme. The Minister has also given assurance to continue with the programme. He must because as many as 1.1 million hungry mouths are fed through this programme.

One fact that should keep the government on its toes is that when it lags behind or is inefficient in this meal programme private companies and philanthropists volunteer to take the initiative. We have seen so many private companies engage in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) projects and fill some of the voids left. John Keels Foundation once carried out such a project titled Gunadamin at a selected rural school and underscored that the ‘programme will complement learning opportunities with nutrition for children and youth’.

There was a time when there was a sizeable drop in attendance at schools and a survey revealed that the reason was due to children not having access to a proper meal at breakfast. There was news that children were fainting during morning assemblies at schools because of the absence of the first meal of the day in the schoolchildren’s diet.It was at a time like that that a pilot programme was carried out by ‘Community Meals Share’ in collaboration with ‘Meal Share’, the Ministry of Education and the relevant Zonal and Divisional Education directors.

Here the meals were provided by parents and the Principals received funds to pay the suppliers. In this programme, the cost incurred per meal was around Rs 100. According to government sources, the cost incurred per person in the present midday programme is around Rs 60 per person and the Minister has said that he intends to increase it.Against this backdrop, it is pertinent to mention that a leading school in Guruthalawa- which was on the verge of closing down due to lack of funds- survived and one of the reasons for that was restarting a defunct farm and abandoned agriculture plots within the school premises. In no time the food bill at the school was made zero.

There is also an effort taken by the State authorities to supplement the process of sending a child to school by reducing the price of school products and shoes. The State is at present in negotiation with suppliers to facilitate this process and make it effective by May 23. Finance Minister Ranjith Siyambalapitiya has said that if the suppliers don’t comply with government regulations the State would look at other options. This is what must be done when faced with a challenge; look for a way out. This is better than putting up shutters and announcing the temporary stop to a programme when funds and ideas run dry.

We also read in newspapers of other roles played by philanthropists coming to the aid of schoolchildren. One was the French Government stepping forward to provide some assistance to the midday meal programme. The other occasion was the Chinese Government volunteering to provide 70% of the school uniforms for free.
The problem with the government is that it would happily wait for an outside force or party to bail it out of trouble. Elsewhere, when a parent struggles financially to provide for the family he or she will take up a second job or immigrate in search of better-paying employment. In Sri Lanka governments over the past few years have changed so rapidly that much of the existing food and welfare programmes haven’t been monitored properly; the result is neglect of schoolchildren. There is no forgiving for that!