Up to 42 public nurseries in Barcelona and their families are living these days with great anxiety and concern because they do not know what their children will eat. The company in charge of the food service, Comer Bien, has entered bankruptcy and does not guarantee the supply of food in the coming days. There are schools that say they have food to make meals until the end of this week, but they no longer have it for next week. The Barcelona City Council has assured that it is working to solve the problem and has authorized the management of the centers to buy the necessary food with the money from the daycare center. Yesterday, the Consistory made a request to the company to give an answer, within 24 hours, on whether to definitively interrupt the service. In addition, he asked the other four companies that serve the rest of the municipal daycares to take over the dining service for the 42 daycares served by Comer Bien, which they have committed to as of mid-week next. For their part, the workers of the affected centers will be replaced by the incoming companies.
“There are schools, like ours, that will no longer have food for the children on Friday”, explains Astrid Batalla, president of the AFA of the Xiroi municipal nursery school, in the Corts district. This Tuesday, the director of the center announced that the company in charge of the canteen of this center and 41 more of the 105 public schools in the city had entered into bankruptcy proceedings, that the cooks were not getting paid and neither were the suppliers, for that reason they were ceasing to supply food. Batalla assures that today there are centers that no longer have bread or milk and that the Municipal Institute of Education of Barcelona (EIMB) is asking the managements of the affected centers to buy the necessary food with the school’s money .
The City Council has explained that Comer Bien has informed them that they have “difficulties” in continuing to provide the service under the conditions required by the contract. In addition, he confirmed that the managements of these centers are “exceptionally authorized to use economic resources belonging to the autonomous management” if it is necessary to “supply” the schools with food products “while the problem is solved”. Yesterday there were several meetings planned to try to defuse the situation.
The affected company manages four batches of daycare centers that affect 42 centers and the IMEB has initiated the necessary actions to “solve the problem” while the affected AFAs are also mobilizing through a WhatsApp group.
Meanwhile, families are living with anxiety because they do not know for sure what their children will eat from next week. Batalla, who has a two-year-old son at the center, regrets that it is now, that the situation is so critical, that the City Council is trying to resolve the situation despite the fact that they knew that the delays in payroll payments to the cooks For days the workers have been working “magic” to be able to serve the agreed menus. And these workers are angry and sad: they don’t get paid and they don’t have food to cook.
At the EBM Can Novell, also in Les Corts, the two kitchen workers began to have problems with the payment of the payroll in September and already then the EIMB was notified, but the delays in payments have continued, he explains Maria Ninot, mother of a two-year-old boy. And they still haven’t been paid for the month of January, complains this mother, who trusts that the food problem can eventually be solved and who is most concerned about the workers’ situation.
In this nursery they don’t know if they will have food next week. The problem, explains Astrid Batalla, is that families are not allowed to prepare food for their children and bring it to the center in a sealed container because the allergen regulations do not allow it. Even so, in Xicoi they do not rule out agreeing and cooking at home if the problem is not solved by next week. “Our children go to daycare because we work and we can’t go to pick them up at lunchtime”, he regrets.
