“As a caring nation that understands the plight of the poor, we have the greatest of empathy with those less fortunate. But at the same time, the health of our nation is also at stake and therefore assisting families in need, as part of the comprehensive country’s plan, is now not the responsibility of the education department,” she said.

“We do not want to expose our communities to the possibilities of contracting the virus. We cannot be telling people to stay safe and stay at home and at the same time we are encouraging them to collect food at school.

“We are sending out conflicting messages to our people in a time when we should be united in putting the health and interests of our learners and communities first. We know, in underprivileged communities if the people are made aware of food being distributed, they will go and queue, thereby exposing the adults or children who collect the food,” she said.

Mbinqo-Gigaba said she would write to Motshekga to request further information about this deviation from the agreed plan as well as on whether people could be allowed to enter school premises during a national lockdown, risking exposing many to the virus.

The Western Cape government announced last week that as part of emergency food relief programmes across the province it had set aside R18m for the department of education to initiate a special school feeding programme from April 8 until April 20, which would target the 485,000 existing school feeding scheme beneficiaries with one takeaway meal a day at about 1,000 schools.

Winde said the provincial department of social development had reactivated the early childhood development (ECD) feeding schemes at the majority of the 1,100 ECDs funded by the department and this would feed up to 80,000 children a day once fully up and running.

The emergency food provision plan includes R20m worth of food parcels to support families for a month, R5m to the department of social development for delivery of an additional 10,000 cooked meals per day for one month and R10m to increase the number of beneficiaries receiving food at existing department of social development feeding schemes to 6,520 people.

The provincial treasury approved an additional R53m last Thursday for the food relief programmes.

Last month, basic education minister Angie Motshekga said the department of basic education would abandon its school nutrition programme — which feeds close to 10-million pupils — during the national lockdown as the feeding scheme depended on teachers, who weren't at work, and schools, which were closed.

To this end, Motshekga said she had handed over the school nutrition function to social development minister Lindiwe Zulu to run, if she could.