Schools across Swaziland are pleading with
businesses and members of the public to donate food for starving children
because the Swazi Government has failed to pay its bills.
A crisis has been growing over recent months and
there are fears that children might die as a result.
The situation grows worse with each passing day,
school principals said. It started at the beginning of the year when the
Government failed to deliver food to schools as part of an established feeding
scheme. It said it did not have the money to buy food.
The
hardest hit, according to local media, are primary schools because they
completely rely on government for financial assistance since the introduction
of the Free Primary Education programme.
The Swazi Observer reported (29 June 2017) the Swaziland Principals Association (SWAPA) met
with the Minister of Education and Training Phineas Magagula without any positive
results, ‘because government is facing money problems at the moment’.
Magagula confirmed
to the newspaper that nothing tangible came out of the meeting to find a solution
to the food crisis.
It quoted
SWAPA President Welcome Mhlanga saying schools were asking ‘the nation,
companies and organisations to come to the rescue and save the situation’.
He said,
‘The situation on the ground is worsening with each passing day. There are
pupils that kept coming to school because of the food but now that there is no
food some are choosing to stay away.’
The
newspaper added, ‘Mhlanga said the situation was dire and it was time for all
to help.’
Last week
the Times of Swaziland reported
school administrators had sent
a number of requests to government, asking it to act fast on the matter because
they feared that they would soon start losing lives due to hunger in schools.
In a report in May 2017, the World
Food Program estimated 350,000 people of Swaziland’s
1.1 million population were in need of food assistance. WFP helped 65,473 of
them. It said it was regularly feeding 52,000 orphaned and vulnerable children
(OVC) aged under eight years at neighbourhood care points. About 45 percent of
all children in thought to be OVCs.
It reported chronic malnutrition affected 26 percent
of all children in Swaziland aged under five.
See also
‘CHILDREN
COULD SOON DIE OF HUNGER’
BAD FOOD
POISONS 200 PUPILS
NO FOOD SO SCHOOLKIDS SENT HOME
HUNGER FORCES SCHOOLS TO CLOSE EARLY
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