An ax for your porridge

In school breakfast for 70 rubles, the cost of products is 30

Tens of millions of budget rubles are sent daily to bacca for food waste in school canteens. From September 1, 2020, the law on hot diet for elementary grades in accordance with the initiative of the president entered into force in Russia.

Every day in the media and social networks, numerous complaints about the sticky pasta, watery porridge and cocoa, microscopic cutlets with almost without meat, as well as the fact that parents are closed with the possibilities for monitoring the quality of nutrition, and children are not even allowed to even take a picture of the menu.

The heads of regions organize checks, in the Primorsky Territory the governor has already fired those responsible for this “front” of work. Putin instructed his envoy to his federal districts to monitor the nutrition of schoolchildren, Rospotrebnadzor “do not get off the topic” and conduct unscheduled inspections of schools and suppliers of products to control the quality of food. The head of Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova should submit the first report by November 15, the envoy will report on the results by November 30.

With all this bureaucratic activity, one does not have to hope for the result. Nothing will change, even if, with the inherent system with a craving for manual control, to stand with the ax above each cook of the school canteen.

Because you can cook porridge from an ax only in a fairy tale.

Immediately after the intention, which was voiced by the President in his message to the Federal Assembly, the Party of Yabloko warned each junior breakfast that in the process of preparing for the launch of the project, it was necessary to modernize not only school catering units, but also an archaic and ineffective school food economy. Otherwise, a very miserable share of the allocated money will remain in the children's plate, and there will be a large number of people and structures that do not fall under the category of primary school students in any way.

I already wrote earlier that when hearing pathos about taking care of children, astronomical amounts allocated for free meals should be divided by pathos and amounts by at least two.

Since half or more from the allocated funds will not be left for children, but to business and, paradoxically, will return back to the budget.

The fact is that annually the number of schools organizing outsourcing nutrition is increasing, that is, with the help of catering enterprises, through the conclusion of the contract with them and transferring school canteens on the basis of the rental of premises.

According to Rospotrebnadzor, given in the state report “On the Sanitary and Epidemiological Wealthy of the Population in the Russian Federation in 2019” there were “47.7% of the total number of daily educational organizations, 19,434 schools”.

Under the terms of the contract, the enterprise must pay for the rental of premises, utilities, cosmetic repairs of premises, ventilation repair, water supply and sewage, the acquisition and repair of refrigerators, trade and technological equipment and furniture. To this, it is necessary to add a fund of the wages of cooks, kitchen workers, accountants and administrative personnel, taxes that the company pays.

In addition, the very right of rent is sold at auction sometimes for a very high price. The enterprise will deploy the entire total amount, which is issued in the form of a trading margin, admitted and approved by local authorities as founders of schools.

The margin sometimes reaches 150% and, thus, the contents of the plate decrease by more than doubled.

In breakfast, worth 70 rubles, the products actually amount to less than 30 rubles. I think there are not enough human imagination opportunities to present a full, hot and delicious breakfast or lunch (!) (In the case of students in the second shift of schoolchildren) for such an amount, even with all the skill of cooks!

Funds that do not get into the children's plate leave it with two streams. One is business: resource -supplying companies in the payment of housing and communal services, enterprises selling furniture and equipment providing repair services, etc., and the catering enterprise for the wage fund of employees and profit. And the second stream will return to the budgets of different levels: taxes that this catering company will pay and payments for the purchase of lease right and for rent.

The administration of this distillation of budget funds also does not happen for free and takes its penny.

Do not save, but it is possible to significantly correct the situation. To do this, you need to minimum, without loss of efficiency of enterprises, to reduce the trading margin.

The transfer of the premises of school catering units of the nursing organization for free use, paying for the communal expenses of school canteens, the purchase of equipment for the kitchen and furniture for the dining room to municipal property with the transfer to the operational department of the school can significantly reduce it and return the money to the plates of children.

Now, when budgets are being formed for the new financial year, you can still have time to foresee all this.

This is a minimum program in order to minimize a shame from the failure of a socially significant project. But in order to save the situation, then the real modernization of the school nutrition system should be carried out, which should be based on three whales: strict antimonopoly measures that provide high competition in this area, carrying out for the competitive procedures not to sell the lease right, and the participation model, and the participation of parents in the selection of the winners of the competition and constant parental control over the organization of children's nutrition.

The winners in such a competitive selection should be those who will offer the most full, healthy, modern one who takes into account the maximum set of requirements (assortment, portion size, vitaminization, selection of dishes, the Swedish table, taking into account the characteristics of children's health, etc.).

The need to “study innovative forms of food, revising the current stereotypes of the organization of school food” recently indicated Rospotrebnadzor. The aforementioned state report notes "the problem of non -demand for students of the proposed nutrition - its qualitative characteristics, form, organization." The survey of high school students conducted by the department revealed the causes of discontent: “The time for me to receive food (57.2%), the crowding of children in the dining room, which does not contribute to the formation of positive emotions during meal (42.7%), cooled food (68.3%), the unability of the diet and the impossibility of choosing dishes at will (47.2%)”. Junior students were not asked, but they most often complain of the same circumstances.

With absolute confidence, it can be argued that the foundations of the ineffective economy and the archaic organization of Russian school food will not yet be revised, no checks at the highest level will help change the contents of the student plate.

People wise by experience say that it is bad when there are two housewives in the kitchen. What is happening in the country's school cuisine shows how bad when it is not at all the owner, but only an invited hired cook and a plenipotentiary, requiring a cook from a kilogram of meat to make ten kilograms of minced meat.

To modernize school cuisine, it is necessary to modernize the political system of the country, because you can’t clearly cook porridge with the current authority.