11 Schools To Pay For Milk

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31304, 25 February 1967, Page 3

11 Schools To Pay For Milk

Eleven schools in Christchurch have come to a private arrangement with the Christchurch Milk Company to have milk supplied at Is a week for each child.

Deliveries to the schools will be resumed on Monday, said the general manager of the company (Mr N. S. H. McCann) yesterday. Many schools have been left with milk trolleys now that the free milk-in-schools scheme has been stopped. The Christchurch Milk Company has large supplies of tinfoil wrapping and 6jin straws left over.

The general manager of Canterbury Dairy Farmers’, Ltd. (Mr L. R. FowlerT, said the reduction in the amount of milk supplied to schools

would form part of the normal surplus. While school milk was supplied there had always been a surplus during the weekend. The extra milk which would now be available would be sent to the Kaiapoi factory as in the pa:t, to be separated into cream for butter production at Tai Tapu, and into milk for milk powder. He said the extra bottles available could easily be used for milk and cream for the general public. Parents Canvassed A total of 181 out of 248 parents associated with the Banks Avenue Primary School, Shirley, this week favoured reinstatement of the milk-in-schools scheme when questioned by the ParentTeacher Association. The association has not yet con-

sidered what action It will take.

Last-minute Plea The Dominion president of the New Zealand School Committees' Federation (Mr R. H. McKenzie, of Gore) has made a last-minute plea to the Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) for the Government to stay its hand. “The national executive has made representations to the

Prime Minister asking that the present scheme be continued for at least another month, so that alternative schemes n»ay be worked out in the interests of child health,” he said. Of 1000 New Zealand school committees which gave their view, only 14 showed a preference for abandoning the scheme. This, he said, was overwhelming evidence of the solid nation-wide body of opinion for retention of milk in schools. Strong Support Dr. N. C. Begg, director of medical services of the Plunket Society, today strongly supported the milk-in-schools scheme. “Whoever pays for it, I hope our children will continue to have the benefit of school milk,” he said in Auckland tonight.