Staff added to boost operations at School Meals Department

By Anesta Henary

The Ministry of Education has started to fulfil its promise to improve the conditions of employees at the School Meals Department (SMD), the union representing the workers has confirmed.

Deputy General Secretary of the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) Wayne Walrond told Barbados TODAY that following a three-hour work stoppage at the SMD’s Harbour Road depot last Friday, the ministry provided additional staff to ensure the “on-time delivery of meals to schools”.

“All I would say is thus far, we appreciate the efforts the ministry has made. Some additional staff came to the Harbour Road centre where the workers stood in solidarity last week. The complement can always be more but they are satisfied that the complement has been improved somewhat.

“The staff are satisfied that they have gotten some additional staff and they are looking at the other issues like the equipment that are not working,” Walrond said.

Last Friday morning, the employees walked off the job complaining of burnout due to a shortage of personnel, inadequate vehicles and ageing equipment. They were back on the job by 10 a.m. but the work stoppage resulted in some schools receiving lunches late and one school not getting meals at all.

Walrond specifically thanked the ministry’s Acting Deputy Permanent Secretary Kim Belle for her efforts.

“I must commend her because she left her office at the ministry [on Monday] and she is committed to going to every centre to hear firsthand what the issues are.

“I know where it is humanly possible, she is going to facilitate resolutions. The ministry getting involved above the level of the General Manager of School Meals means that the matter has engaged the ministry’s attention,” he said.

On Monday, accompanied by a labour officer, Walrond visited the SMD depots at Lancaster, St James; Country Road, St Michael; and St Christopher, Christ Church where he listened to employees’ concerns and investigated their working conditions.

The senior union official said that while some sections of society had chastised the SMD employees at Harbour Road for standing their ground last week, many were not aware of the sacrifices workers had made over the years, including reporting to work as early as 3 a.m. in many instances.

He contended that the employees had endured the poor working conditions because of their love for feeding the nation’s children.

“And the moment you do something, people are going to get and say they are cruel to the children. But the staff have been suffering in silence for a long time dealing with a shortage of staff – people retiring and they are not replacing staff,” Walrond said.

“A lot of these women suffer from burnout. They are dealing with obsolete equipment. They are talking about the low grades of pay given the kind of hours and the kind of conditions they work under. They call them school meals assistants which is the term that replaced cooks but they feel that they should go back to the term cooks because the term school meals assistants does not reflect what they do and it opens them to exploitation and doing things beyond what a cook should do. We just want their issues dealt with from a holistic point of view,” the NUPW official added.

anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb