The president of the Association of Primary School Principals, Antonija Mirosavljevic, said on Monday that 60% of primary schools managed to provide students with hot meals instead of dairy food portions in the first week since the introduction of free hot meals.

In a statement for the Croatian state news agency Hina, Mirosavljevic said that only a couple of schools were unable to provide their students with a free school meal in the first week of the second semester and that the others found a way to do it.

She estimates that 60% of the schools, the ones that have kitchens, canteens and cooks, have managed to provide hot meals for their students.

She cited the case of Sisak-Moslavina County, where over the past six years all primary schools have prepared hot meals for their students, as well as Osijek-Baranja, Istria and Varazdin counties, which have been doing so for years.

Mirosavljevic said that schools which in the current transitional period have provided only dairy food portions for their students will continue to do so for a certain period of time, until conditions are created for them to have canteens, kitchens and cooks to be able to provide hot meals.

Organisation, food procurement biggest problem

Mirosavljevic noted that organisation and food procurement have turned out to be the biggest problem so far.

“There is a problem with delivery businesses which in some situations are unable to make a delivery. There is also the problem of storage space in schools so delivery services have to bring food every two or three days, and they want to be able to do so once a week, otherwise it’s not profitable for them,” she said.

Good planning is essential to prevent the throwing away of food, she said, expressing confidence that in the first week of the second semester there was no surplus food or food waste because schools served seconds as well as distributed surplus dairy food portions to their students.