JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Political squabble over school food cards

by

Chester Sambrano
1908 days ago
20200503
Persons at Couva South MP Rudranath Indarsingh’s office waiting to apply for food cards.

Persons at Couva South MP Rudranath Indarsingh’s office waiting to apply for food cards.

SHASTRI BOODAN

There is now a po­lit­i­cal de­bate on whether the school feed­ing foods cards is­sued by the gov­ern­ment were enough to sup­ply every­one in need. Op­po­si­tion MPs are paint­ing a dif­fer­ent pic­ture to some of those on the op­po­site side when it comes to the COVID-19 so­cial ini­tia­tive.

The cards came about specif­i­cal­ly to pro­vide food sup­port for house­holds with a child/chil­dren reg­is­tered on the Na­tion­al School Feed­ing Pro­gramme af­ter schools were closed on March 13 to pre­vent the spread of the virus.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, the process for col­lec­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion in­volves the sub­mis­sion of names of the stu­dents on the School Feed­ing Reg­is­ter by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. Once ver­i­fied, the lists are sent to the MP’s of­fices where el­i­gi­ble re­cip­i­ents are called and in­formed of their col­lec­tion dates and time.

To date, each Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment has been is­sued with 500 cards for dis­tri­b­u­tion.

March 23—50 cards, March 27—47 cards, April 1—100 cards, April 9—100 cards and April 20—203 cards.

But not all MPs are hap­py with the quan­ti­ty.

Cu­mo­to/Man­zanil­la MP Chris­tine Newal­lo-Ho­sein told Guardian Me­dia, “Based on the cur­rent sta­tus of the list­ing fol­low­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of 500 cards, I can safe­ly say there are more than 1,000 stu­dents in my con­stituen­cy that are yet to re­ceive a food card...This is ex­treme­ly dis­tress­ing, to say the least.”

Her col­league on the op­po­si­tion bench Ca­roni Cen­tral MP Dr Bhoe Tewarie shared sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments.

“The list of par­ents of chil­dren who ben­e­fit from the school feed­ing pro­gramme is just un­der 1100, so 500 cards will not meet all needs,” he said

The short­age is al­so be­ing re­port­ed on the gov­ern­ment side.

D’ Abadie/Omera MP An­cil An­toine, “The food cards so far are in­suf­fi­cient be­cause they are in high de­mand through­out the con­stituen­cy.”

But there is at least one dis­sent­ing view and it came from San Fer­nan­do East Mp Ran­dall Mitchell.

“They have been suf­fi­cient now for those fam­i­lies who have been ren­dered vul­ner­a­ble by this pan­dem­ic.”

Ac­cord­ing to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia, 33,000 stu­dents re­ceive break­fast dai­ly, while 79,000 get lunch.

500 cards mul­ti­plied by 41 MPs amounts to 20,500. Of course, there are house­holds with more than one child ben­e­fit­ing from the pro­gramme.

Two of those chil­dren be­long to Shenelle Nel­son from Guico in San­gre Grande.

The prob­lem is, ac­cord­ing to Nel­son, on­ly one of her daugh­ter’s names are on the MPs list and she is yet to re­ceive the food card.

The sin­gle moth­er of two daugh­ters, 9 and 11 years, said, “I not work­ing, I was laid off it’s been very dif­fi­cult.”

Nel­son al­so said her predica­ment is not unique as she knows of oth­ers in her com­mu­ni­ty fac­ing the same chal­lenge.

Com­plaints and the con­cerns have been plas­tered all over so­cial me­dia and in the DMs (di­rect mes­sages) of me­dia hous­es.

Guardian Me­dia sought to get to the bot­tom the sit­u­a­tion and sent ques­tions to Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Camille Robin­son-Reg­is.

She said to date MPs col­lect­ed 19992 cards and her min­istry has the ap­proval to dis­trib­ute 20,500.

“Please un­der­stand that the ini­tia­tive is in­tend­ed to pro­vide sup­port to fam­i­lies whose chil­dren are reg­is­tered with the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme. The Min­istry re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. We are aware that some fam­i­lies have mul­ti­ple chil­dren at­tend­ing school. We gave one card to a fam­i­ly.”

Min­is­ter Robin­son-Reg­is al­so asked per­sons to be mind­ful that this is not the on­ly food ini­tia­tive of the Min­istry.

“We have the Emer­gency Ham­per dis­tri­b­u­tion with Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment bod­ies and a “mar­ket box” and Su­per­mar­ket vouch­er dis­tri­b­u­tion in con­junc­tion with the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, the Su­per­mar­kets’ As­so­ci­a­tion and the Poul­try As­so­ci­a­tion.”

She said the on­ly “mi­nor” de­lay with the cards was that some of the cards had faulty or no PINs.

This as­sis­tance was ap­proved for three months. Re­cip­i­ents re­ceived all in one pay­ment $1,530.00.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored