Chinese education officials canned after speculation of stealing from lunch program
December 3, 2012
Five Chinese education officials were fired this week after there was a lot of speculation surrounding what children were being fed from a national lunch program. These officials were allegedly stealing from the lunch program, according to NBC News.
The five officials, who were in the Fenghuang school district in the Hunan province, were dismissed after the country fought against the type of food they were serving for the lunch program, which consisted of a 20-gram piece of bread and a 200-ml carton of milk, according to the news source.
The outrage began after a volunteer teacher, Liang Xuyue, posted a picture on Weibo, which is a similar service as Twitter, of the lunch. The lunch is not even close to what the ministry of education recommends for students, which includes meat, eggs and milk. Not to mention, Liang revealed that the school had seven cases of expired milk, according to the news source.
People were not pleased with the recent findings, and have been very vocal about their opinions on Weibo.
"I've said it before, when it comes to money it is impossible for us to believe these officials without supervision!" wrote one Weibo user. "We should send these Ministry of Education officials to the forests to experience starvation!" said another.
China's lunch program gives 16 billion yuan or $2.5 billion in 2012 to provide free lunches to about 26 million poor students. This translates to only 3 yuan or (48 cents) is available for each student. This is much different from the $2.86 for free meals per student in the United States.
Not only are people upset in this area, but many are wondering what is going on with the lunch program across the country.
"In China the quality of life differs in various areas, so there is no unified national standard for what lunch should be like," Deng Fei, a former journalist for China's Phoenix Weekly news magazine, told the publication.
According to China Daily, this isn't over for the school officials, as a team was sent to the province in order to conduct a full-blown investigation of the provincial education department.
Those who want to talk about the recent revelations can make calls to China using international calling cards.