Education Ministry invited to investigate the school canteens' scandals

Manager and advisers of school restaurants exposed, in a special report, the excesses of mayors of municipalities and suppliers of school canteens, and their implication in deals of school catering, which do not respect the laws, calling upon the ministry to intervene in order to review the price of a meal for pupils, especially since some three million pupils are concerned with the school nutrition system.

Advisers of school feeding, accused former mayors, of not providing the necessary resources to implement the plan of school feeding, and complained of a lack of qualified labor and the lack of night watch in schools that contain restaurants, usually from robbery of the remaining food supplies that are allocated to preparing school meals by workers due to the lack of refrigerators.

They asked for reconsideration of the administration’s council, as stipulated in the circular No. 195/133 dated 24 May 2009, relating to the conduct of school canteens, which assigned to the task of running school canteens for the council, which is consisting of the mayor as president and director of middle schools, as members along with the director of the school and representative of medical services.

However, the report showed that most of the councils across educational institutions does not include neither doctors, nor representatives of associations of parents, as they usually repeated daily meals that are provided to students, first and foremost, “Macaroons and lentils” as key meals, asking to provide a Cup milk per
pupil.

The reports that were exposed asserted that most of the schools do not take into account the periodic monitoring of water, which is used in cooking, washing and drinking, as well as the lack of good cleaning for buckets and equipment, cooking utensils and the lack of health surveillance and food safety prior to use.

One of the abuses that were raised in the report, a copy available to Echorouk, is the most workers in the schools, who are not subjected to medical examinations at the beginning of each semester, in anticipation of any disease that may cause harm to the pupils, as well as the lack of commitment to apply the rules of conservation and refrigeration of foodstuffs, and the non-surveillance of health and safety of food before their use .