No food no school for Omitara pupils

THE six-week delay in the start of the National School Feeding Programme at a school in Omitara could have forced some pupils to skip school if it was not for the contributions of a Good Samaritan in the area.

Otjivero Primary School principal Rebecca Heita yesterday said the maize-meal that is normally delivered each semester at the school through the government’s National School Feeding Programme (NSFP) was six weeks late without a satisfactory response from the Omaheke education regional office.

“Fortunately, a local farmer from Rooikraal offered the school some maize-meal and some game meat,” she said.

Although Heita said about 240 bags of maize-meal were finally delivered at the school by the ministry last Monday, they still had not received a satisfactory answer why there was a six-week delay.

“We were informed it has something to do with transport issues from the company that received the tender because government finally delivered the bags of maize themselves in a truck,” she said.

Heita said she has observed that most pupils at the school only attend classes because of the free porridge they receive under the programme. For many pupils, the porridge, which is served at break time is the only source of nutrition they receive per day and encourages them to continue attending classes as the majority of them come from impoverished households.

“We are serving a community of poverty-stricken pupils so the NSFP motivates them to stay in school,” she said, adding that had it not been for NSFP, they would be experiencing a high rate of dropouts.

Heita said it was important for the children to study on a full stomach. Already more than 13 out of 350 children from Grades 0 up to 7 dropped out of school this year alone. “Parents often remove their children from school without even informing us. Some of the children, about 20 of them, registered at the beginning of the year but never showed up,” she said.

Spokesperson at the ministry of education Johanna Absalom did not answer questions on why the delivery to the school was late but said government had spent over N$100 million providing one midday meal to pupils as part of the NSFP.

Director of education in the Omaheke region Peka Semba was not available for comment.

The NSFP maize-meal is delivered to schools nationwide every semester and is one of government’s key strategies for addressing inequalities in education and expanding educational opportunities for disadvantaged Namibians. The programme is one of the biggest food-based programmes run by the government.

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