Although it may sound like a playground joke, the mafia da merenda or school meals mafia is in no way related to child’s play but is, rather, a wide scale corruption scandal within the Education Secretariat, among others, in the state of São Paulo, in Brazil.
This name, used by the media, refers to the misappropriation of public money affecting schools in at least 22 districts. Thousands of primary and secondary school pupils in Brazil’s richest state have, for several months, been deprived, at best, of the traditional merenda (mid-morning or afternoon snack), and, at worst, a complete and healthy lunch.
“My daughter spends eight hours a day studying on an empty stomach! It’s not right!” protests Maria-Louisa, a mother of three who lives in a northern suburb of São Paulo. She has come to support her daughter Helena, a vocational secondary school student, during a demonstration organised by pupils from several establishments, on 20 April 2016.
Seventeen-year-old Chico tells Equal Times that since the start of the new school year in February, his school, despite being public, no longer serves lunch: “Last year, lunch in the canteen cost R$5.00 (US$1.40) and now we eat at a local café for R$10 (US$2.80). And for those who bring their own lunch, there is just one microwave for 6,000 people.”
To illustrate the scale of the problem, school pupils in the region have created an Instagram and Facebook page called Diario da Merenda (snack diary) and have invited fellow students to share photos of the food they are given in their canteens, to shed light on the tremendous disparities.
“The local government is under a legal obligation to provide state school pupils with adequate nutrition during the hours they spend at school,” recalls Maria-Louisa, the mother-of-three, standing on the sidelines of the demonstration with a placard saying, “A governor who does not respect education will not have not have my vote in 2018.”
Corruption and mobilisation
The root of the problem indeed lies at political level. The deterioration in the quality of school meals is not simply to do with poor management or budgetary cuts (as some establishments have tried to argue), but is the result of an embezzlement scam orchestrated by public servants, including some thought to be close to the governor of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin (of the centre-right PSDB).
On 29 March, seven people were arrested within the framework of a joint operation by the police and the State Public Prosecutor’s Office. Amongst them was the former president of the Chamber of Deputies of the Legislative Assembly of São Paulo state.
Affecting a state with 44 million inhabitants, almost the equivalent to the entire population of Spain, this corruption scandal would perhaps be given more front-page media coverage if the rest of the country were not already immersed in the revelations surrounding the Petrobras scandal hitting the highest levels of government, including President Dilma Rousseff.
The São Paulo investigation, started three months ago and still underway, has already revealed that around a dozen public servants working from their offices in the Legislative Assembly, together with a number of mayors and deputies, had arranged a deal, based on overbilling and backhanders, with at least one cooperative in charge of supplying school meals.
The cooperative, for example, would charge as much as double the price of the products supplied to the canteens and then transfer between 10 and 30 per cent of the extra earnings to the people involved in the scam.
The current president of the São Paulo Legislative Assembly, Fernando Capez, and a former principal private secretary at the Education Secretariat have been accused of being the main beneficiaries of the misappropriated funds, although the two men have denied any involvement.
According to the Special Action Group for the Repression of Organised Crime, GAECO, the fraud detected between 2013 and 2015 amounts to R$7 million (US$1.9 million), of which around 10 per cent was specifically allocated to the payment of kickbacks.
School teachers and pupils’ parents, supported by social and trade union movements, are calling for the opening of a parliamentary inquiry within the Legislative Assembly, in addition to the police investigation.
For Izabel Noronha, president of the São Paulo state school teachers’ trade union, APEOSESP: “There is no worse crime than taking food out of children’s mouths. It is essential that a parliamentary inquiry be opened, as we want to unearth the money embezzled and improve the quality of our children’s meals. We cannot continue to give them crackers, especially since many children [from poorer families], expect the school to cover its share in their daily sustenance,” she said to the Brazilian news agency EBC during a demonstration in front of the Legislative Assembly on 23 February.
As strange as it may seem, this is not the first scandal of this kind. Officials under previous governments have already targeted school children’s meals as a source of illegal profit.
But now, pupils are taking to the streets to demand answers regarding this scandal. Since 28 April, a number of secondary school students have been occupying their schools, as they did in 2015.
On the night of 3 to 4 May, several dozen marched into and occupied the council chamber of the São Paulo State Legislative Assembly. They were dislodged by the police.
Last year, they won a battle against the local government after occupying some 200 schools, to oppose plans to reorganise the education system and to close 92 establishments. The government backed down.
Maria-Louisa confides, “These young people will have the right to vote at the next elections! I am supporting them and tell them they will also be armed, as citizens, with a vote!”
