Genuinely so because no one expects that this feeding programme would come at a loss to the women providing these services to Ipelegeng workers. Indeed the ripple down effect of this programme would be felt seven folds across many families around the country, considering that the Ipelegeng programme employs 40,000 people in a month. It is disturbing however to learn that a woman who expects to reap P3,000 on average a month from this feeding programme, ends up using equally the same amount of money and often more to buy such expensive ingredients as flour, cooking oil, Oros, sugar, salt, yeast, gas and salt. In our story in which we interview one of the providers of this service, the poor woman tells The Monitor that she will be counting losses come month end, as a result of high costs of production. It is our genuine belief that government did not conceive this feeding scheme with the objective of saddling the poor women with high production costs in pursuit of a pipe dream. We want to believe that when this programme was born the visionary position was to broaden the government safety net programme so that it deliberately supports the small businesses, in this case single households led by women. While this noble intention remains highly applauded and encouraged, it is the manner of implementing it that worries us. We believe that just like it is done for small businesses undertaking backyard gardening, equally the service providers in the Ipelegeng feeding scheme needs government support in developing or sharpening their business acumen to enable them to make the right business decisions and choices when it comes to buying the ingredients, as well as the size of the diphaphatha to serve. Let us teach them the most cost effective ways of buying these ingredients so that their profit margins are not dwarfed or eroded by the high production costs that might have been otherwise avoided thanks to good mentoring.
Matlo go sha mabapi
