School meals battle in court on Thursday
Advocacy group Equal Education is set to take the Department of Basic Education to court on Thursday over its failure to provide meals to pupils across the country during the national lockdown.
The urgent case brought by the group and two Limpopo schools will be heard in the High Court in Pretoria.
Equal Education wants the court to compel the department to feed all pupils and not only those back at school.
General-secretary of the advocacy group Noncedo Madubedube says they hope to bring the matter to a close soon.
“We wrote back to the department and told them these are the recommendations we have and how best to run a school nutrition programme.
“There are ways that different countries across the world have shown us that you can roll out the school nutrition programme. It doesn’t necessarily have to be cooked meals, it could be non-perishable food items and food parcels given to learners.
She adds: “We talked to them about the different ways that they could social distance inside schools and how they could stagger the times of coming in and picking up food.”
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The department’s nutrition programme ground to a halt at the start of the national lockdown in March.
Equal Education also wants the department to be held accountable for implementation dates and has wants detailed progress reports to be filed with the court.
“What we’re asking the court to call for the department to do is to produce a public, comprehensive and concise plan to show us how exactly they are going to roll out the school nutrition programme,” says Madubedube.
“What we’re asking for is 9 million learners, today with immediate effect, need to be eating those one or two meals from the school closest to them.”