The Deputy of the Common admitted the complaint presented by the group of mothers and fathers of students from the Punta Larga Infant and Primary Education Center (CEIP) in Candelaria, against the change of management of the dining room in the 2022-2023 academic year. The association will expand the information and data that during the summer months have been compiling on the matter and in defense that “health and education of minors prevail.”
These parents of students oppose the privatization of the school cafeteria management because it decreases the quality of the food and makes the service more expensive. The measure was agreed by the School Board at its meeting on April 29. Decision that coincided with the approval, by the Ministry of Education, Universities, Culture and Sports of the Government of the Canary Islands, of a new dining room with kitchen, work that was tendered in May for 414,718 euros.
«We do not understand the desire to privatize this service. Any private catering company, no matter how good it may be, has its logical and legitimate profit motive. For this reason, if there is a profit margin, we want it to revert to the quality of our children’s food and to the quality and improvement of the conditions of those who cook and serve them in the school canteen ”, they point out.
The group of parents of the CEIP Punta Larga conveys to public opinion its consideration that, in the field of school feeding, “the way forward is lost due to what was approved in the Parliament of the Canary Islands and in the plenary session of the Candelaria City Council” . For this group, “it is a clear contradiction that direct management measures are approved in the political spheres and then not implemented. It lacks any logic.
In the very center
They claim the best dining service for the student beneficiaries of the Punta Larga center, but they also want “it to be public and directly managed, committed to quality, management and food responsibility.”
The seriousness of the decision lies in the fact that it affects both the feeding of the minors and the family economy, says this group of fathers and mothers. They state that privatization “will lead to an increase in quotas” at a time of economic crisis caused by the pandemic. “There are families that cannot afford to pay more for the service for each child, because there are more than one in the dining room,” they point out.
The launch of this campaign before the end of the 2020-2021 academic year came after the School Council opted to give the go-ahead to the privatization of the canteen service. Then and now they show respect and say they understand that it is the competent body to make this decision, but the group maintains that, in a center with more than 700 students, «parents will have to be involved and be informed of certain decisions that they affect essential benefits for our children. A line in which they maintain their claim and their fight.
