The workers who feed nine million school children - and earn just R2,300 a month

Food handlers feed nine million children daily. Yet they only earn R17 per hour. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks.

• The National School Nutrition Programme feeds nine million school children daily at a cost of about R10-billion a year. To do this, it employs over 60,000 “food handlers”.
• Food handlers prepare the food, dish it up, clean up, monitor stock and keep order. Yet they are paid R17 per hour, and their contracts designate them as “volunteers”.
• According to the National Department of Basic Education, this is because they are employed under the Expanded Public Works Programme. But the public works programme was never intended to be used to pay rock-bottom wages to what are effectively essential full-time state workers.
• To pay food handlers minimum wage (R30.23/hour), an additional R1.3-billion would be required annually.

The national minimum wage, if you work six hours a day, five days a week, is just shy of R4,000 per month. Yet there are thousands of people doing vital work, earning only R2,300 per month. And their employer is not some exploitative private company or sweatshop; it’s the government.

Every weekday, Noxolo and Lwazi (not their real names) arrive at school at 6:30am. They clean the kitchen and prepare pap for 300 children. They dish up for them, keep order, and then clean up when breakfast is over. Then they prepare lunch, which they serve at about noon. They have to keep track of stock, ensure food is prepared hygienically, and the kitchen is kept pristine. They leave school at about 1pm.

Noxolo has been doing this for years. Lwazi is new. Officially, they are employed by the school governing board, but their contract is written on a document provided by the Western Cape Education Department and the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP).

Their R2,256 salary per month is paid from a national conditional grant. A further R45 is paid to UIF. This particular school chooses to top up their salaries, mainly to cover transport, but for thousands of NSNP food handlers across the country, R2,256 is their take-home monthly pay.

Last year, the NSNP budget allocation was a little under R10-billion. Food handlers constitute about 17% of this budget.

The national education department says nine million children are fed daily by the NSNP in 20,000 schools. There are nearly 62,000 food handlers countrywide. This works out to about 145 children fed twice daily per food handler. Their work reduces food insecurity and improves educational outcomes.

The national minimum wage, with some exemptions, is R30.23 per hour. For someone working five days a week, six hours a day (and food handlers often work longer than this), this works out to a bit over R47,000 per year. Food handlers earn under R28,000 per year.

Even accounting for food handlers having more leave than most permanent workers because they only work during school terms, their annual wages don’t come close to the national minimum wage. But the National Minimum Wage Act may provide a legal loophole for the government to pay such low wages: the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP).

The national education department told GroundUp that food handlers are employed under the public works programme. The gazetted hourly rate under the National Minimum Wage Act for public works workers is R16.62. The department, this year, calculates that it is paying the food handlers R17.27 per hour for an eight-hour day, for 195 days of work per year. This is how the R27,000 per annum salary package is reached.

The department appears to be sympathetic to the need to increase food handler salaries. In response to our questions, the department wrote: “It is true that their role is key to the provision of school meals and should be appropriately rewarded in line with the provisions of the Department of Employment and Labour provisions as the department is currently doing. The department will continue to make a case through internal budgetary processes with National Treasury.”

The department has calculated that to employ food handlers at the national minimum wage, i.e. R47,000 per year, would require an additional budget allocation of approximately R1.3-billion.

Is it lawful?

Nothing in the contract Noxolo and Lwazi signed indicates they are public works workers. The national department appeared to suggest in their answers to us that this might be because some provinces have not yet updated contracts to reflect this.

Noxolo and Lwazi’s contract states that their work does not constitute permanent employment and “no expectation of permanent or continued employment is created”. Yet Noxolo has been doing this, full-time, for several years.

It also states: “This is a voluntary service agreement and the food handler is not forced to provide the service”, and “This is a stipend-based service agreement under the NSNP.”

At Noxolo and Lwazi’s school they are the only full-time workers who are not union members. Because the food handlers are recognised as “volunteers” it is hard for them to unionise.

In 2003, the original purpose of the EPWP was to “provide poverty and income relief through temporary work for the unemployed to carry out socially useful activities”.

It was not intended to be used as an excuse to pay rock-bottom wages to full-time state workers providing an essential service, which appears to be the case with the food handlers.

The teacher who described Noxolo and Lwazi’s situation to us responded angrily to the department’s response to our questions, describing it as exploitative.

Debbie Collier, a labour law specialist at the University of the Western Cape, told GroundUp: “The EPWP is an important government initiative to address unemployment and advance the public good through a range of labour-intensive programmes, including environmental and infrastructure projects, and the provision of social and community services.”

“However, there are gaps in protection, and EPWP workers who perform continuous or recurring work should enjoy job security and be able to unionise without fear. Low pay is also a concern, and the significant pay gap between the national minimum wage and the EPWP minimum wage should be revisited.”

Support independent journalism
Donate using Payfast