ONGWEDIVA – A large consignment of food supplied by the Ministry of Education as part of government’s school feeding scheme in Oshikoto Region continue to get spoiled while stored in warehouses and storerooms.
Some of the 740 bags of maize each weighing 12.5 kg stored at the Oshikoto regional directorate, and others stored at a warehouse at King Kauluma were destroyed by fire by health officials in August this year.
The remainder of the bags currently stored at a warehouse at King Kauluma will also be burnt because they have expired.
“Instead of giving the bags to schools for the children or giving them to the so many hungry people in the country, they are left to rot and be destroyed by health officials,” revealed a source.
New Era understands that the bags were destroyed by fire after health inspectors declared the maize spoilt and unfit for human consumption.
The Acting Director of Education in Oshikoto Region, Elizabeth Mwaala, confirmed to New Era that a total of 740 bags were found spoiled and unfit for human consumption.
She however revealed that the problem does not lie with the region, but rather with the supplier who fails to deliver maize on time.
According to Mwaala the maize that was used during the first term was procured from 2013 because the stock for the first term was only delivered at the end of the first term when the children went on holiday.
“The maize for the second term did also not arrive on time, it arrived at the end of the second term and so the children in the second term were fed with maize from the first term,” said Mwaala.
This is not the first time that the region has made headlines regarding the school feeding programme.
Last year a local daily reported that more than 100 pupils at Waapandula Primary School at Omuthiya who are said to be on anti-retrovirals were struggling to take their pills after they had not received support from the national school feeding programme.
Earlier this year, stakeholders within the Ministry of Education including school inspectors and hostel officials held a workshop to find a solution to the unending problems of food storage and the management of hostel staff.
The incident is a stark reminder of an incident in the Zambezi Region in 2005 when some 18 400 bags of maize meal that were intended for flood and drought relief for needy people rotted in a military warehouse outside Katima Mulilo, because officials at that time grumbled they were not being paid “overtime” to deliver the food.
Monkeys and mice ended up feasting on thousands of packets of instant rice, cooking oil and biscuits, and ironically no one was held accountable.