PARENTS and students on the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH) are being asked by some schools to fork out money for free lunches provided by the Government under the initiative established to assist poor Jamaicans.

Two weeks ago, angry parents in Clarendon called the Jamaica Observer to that parish where they blasted the principal and staff at Freetown Primary School. The parents complained that they are being asked to pay up to 80 per cent of the cost for lunches daily, despite being on PATH.

Introduced islandwide in 2002, PATH’s school-feeding component allows for children of poor families to be provided with free lunches on three of the five school days weekly. Such families, according to the Ministry of Labour and Social Security website, must satisfy the eligibility criteria which include taking a ‘Proxy Means Test’, as well as undergoing an interview that seeks to evaluate the family’s social and financial status.

But even after successfully meeting the requirements, the parents fumed, their children are still being asked to pay for the lunches.

While they agreed to speak with the Jamaica Observer, none of the parents living in communities near the school were willing to have their names published in this story. They feared their testimonies could lead to victimisation of their children, they said.

“Every day the children have to pay; some pay $50, while some pay $80. Anyone who is not on the PATH pay the full $100,” said one parent who claimed that her child has been attending Freetown Primary School for three years.

“You have to pay a minimum; whether it is half-price, three-quarter price; you have to pay,” the mother continued, adding that she has found it hard to maintain her four children, all of whom are PATH beneficiaries. “Paying $80 for the food is just as cheap as paying the $100,” she said before declaring that she plans on withdrawing herself and her family from the programme.

“It just does not work out,” she said, noting that the authorities at one of the other schools attended by her children helped to fuel a negative stigma regarding the PATH. At that school, she claimed, staff cook separate meals, giving the less nutritious plates to students who are on PATH, while the other, more nutritious meals, are served to the general school population.

The parent, however, noted that this was not the case at Freetown Primary, as the principal “cook one pot every day, she don’t stigmatise, and she always encourages you to send your child to school, even when you don’t have the money”.

Added the mother: “But what I don’t understand is that past and present governments have been telling you one thing and then the principal act differently. The Government allows the schools to let the principals run things. Everybody who is on the PATH has that complaint.”

When the Sunday Observer contacted Education Minister Ronald Thwaites on Friday, he said it was unacceptable for PATH students to be charged for lunches on the days they were designated to receive the food free.

“I would like to say categorically that it is not permitted for PATH students, on those days when the benefit is supposed to be available for them, to be charged,” said Thwaites. “So if there is any misguided principal or any particular circumstances where something otherwise was happening, I would urge you to be very thorough in your investigations and spread no broad brush.”

Added Thwaites: “I am speaking to you from south-western St Ann. I have visited nine schools today and at every one of them the principals and the staff members come together, they stretch the money, and m ultiply loaves and fishes to make sure that the PATH students get something to eat every day.”

Last week, another Freetown Primary School parent said there is only one solution to the PATH problem.

“We would like for the Government to overhaul the PATH and let the people know if we are suppose to pay half the value of the lunch or not, because the Government has been telling you one thing and then the principals do another,” she said. “The Government don’t have somebody in the school system to know what is going on every day. We know, and we know that it is not working.”

The principal was away at a meeting when the Sunday Observer visited Freetown Primary two weeks ago. However, staff at the school — its vice-principal, guidance counsellor, a senior teacher, a grade two and a grade three teacher — met with the news team in the guidance counsellor’s office where they defended the school’s position.

Though the representatives spoke with the Sunday Observer at length about the issue, they made it clear that they were not voicing the school’s official position. That responsibility, they said, was solely the principal’s.

However, efforts to contact the principal since then have not been successful.

The vice-principal confirmed that students in fact pay a portion of the cost for lunch. However, “it is not a hard and fast thing because if they don’t have it, whether they are on PATH or not, we still feed them. Sometimes when they come we just write down their names and they don’t give us any money at all”, she said.

“We do give them lunch and then we say ‘alright, you can give a small contribution’,” she added.

Last September, the Government budgeted $3.319 billion for nutrition for the 2011-2012 academic year. Of that amount, $2.5 billion was to be put towards the School Feeding Unit, which accounts for 175,000 students on the cooked lunch programme, and another 220,000 on the PATH. A total of $1.4 billion was allocated to the former programme, while the latter was given $1.1 billion.

But still the funds are not enough, one of the younger teachers at Freetown Primary School argued, reiterating a warning by Sharon Reid, principal at St Andrew High School for Girls and president of the Jamaica Association of Principals of Secondary Schools, about the allocation in last year’s budget.

“When we worked it out it was like $25 per child, and if we have 200 children on PATH we are only getting money for 150 of them. So we are not getting the right amount from the ministry and sometimes the money is late,” explained the teacher.

“Second, some of the parents are unreasonable, because they just send their children to school and say ‘he is on PATH’ when there is nothing to show that this child is in fact registered on PATH,” the teacher added.

She argued that it is not fair or feasible for the school to be asked to feed such students five days a week. Her colleagues said they found it strange that parents would complain about the issue as it has been repeatedly discussed in parent/teachers’ meetings.

When contacted, Dunstan Bryan, PATH project director at the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, said he is aware that some schools were charging parents for PATH lunches.

“The ministry is aware that some schools request a “co-pay” for school lunches. It is our understanding that these arrangements are generally made with the clear understanding and agreement of the parents /teachers’ association in the relevant school,” Bryan said in an e-mail response.

“As it relates to other amenities, we are not aware of PATH students being charged, with the exception of school-related sundries such as graph paper, id cards, etc.”

While he could not speak specifically to the Freetown Primary School situation, Bryan said that contrary to the teacher’s claim, students are allotted $52 per day, which is calculated per term and paid to the school.

Ironically, Bryan fingered as the major challenge to the PATH “the high rate of non-compliance for school attendance”, especially among male students in grades 10 – 13.

He said his ministry is working with the Ministry of Education to reduce this factor, and directed further questions regarding the PATH to that ministry.

In the meantime, Thwaites confessed that the PATH system was inadequate and said that he would be lobbying for an improvement of the programme.

“How can $50 a day for three days a week feed a student? This is one of the inequities of the system; we want to tax everything and the cost of living for ordinary people goes up with the social security benefit, but the support to mitigate that is not properly in place,” he argued.

“It is a system that far predates my incumbency in the Ministry of Education and I think it is highly inadequate, and I’m lobbying on behalf of the PATH students who comprise more than 50 per cent of all students in Jamaica. I am lobbying hard for the benefit to be extended over the five days and also for the sum which is provided to be improved,” said Thwaites.