Sources at the dorms of the Anna Regina Multilateral School in Essequibo are angry over a report in yesterday’s Guyana Times about the students being affected because the kitchen was out of “essential food items.”
They told Stabroek News that the report yesterday has caused a lot of embarrassment to the students, who are from the riverain areas. They endured taunting from the other students and one boy who is a bit “chubby” was even told that he “eat out all of the food and that’s why the children had to drink water.”
While they agreed that a supplier (name provided), was in a dispute with the Regional Administration of Region Two over payment, it did not in any way, create a shortage in the kitchen, as claimed.
They said the school also has other suppliers. They would also ensure that the students, 107 in total, get their full share food on their plates. They also denied that the children were given water instead of tea on Wednesday morning. According to one of the sources, the students had bread with jam and tea on Wednesday morning for breakfast, “cook up rice with loud chicken for lunch and vermicelli cake and drink for dessert and for dinner they had cabbage with chicken.”
She recalled that for breakfast yesterday the children had plantain, eggs, bake and salt fish with a fruit and tea. For lunch, they had fried ochro with chicken with rice and for dinner they had “sada roti with pumpkin with loud chicken and hot cocoa.”
She said too that around 8:30 after the children’s study time, they would have a snack.
The woman said that yesterday morning one of the students brought the article to her attention, telling her that “what they wrote here is not true. And when I read it I got vex and started taking out pictures of the good food they were having.”
Contacted, Regional Chairman, Devanand Ramdatt told this newspaper that he could not say much because he was only made aware of the matter on Wednesday afternoon. Meanwhile, the sources hoped that the problem would be kept at the level of the regional administration and wished that the children “would not be used for political reasons.”
