The Attorney General’s Office indicates that several departments and municipalities do not have the operation of the PAE School Feeding Program guaranteed, because the contracts expire in May. Boyacá was one of the departments mentioned, like the cities of Sogamoso and Duitama, in response to the statement from the attorney general’s office, the Technical Subdirectorate of the PAE confirmed that the non-certified municipalities will assume the expenses.
On April 30, in a statement, the Attorney General’s Office referred to the expired or soon-to-expire contracts of the PAE. The statement stated that “in the framework of the surveillance carried out on the School Feeding Program, the First Delegate Attorney General’s Office for the Preventive Surveillance of the Function Public sent letters alerting the risk of continuity in 35 territorial entities, because to date they have expired contracts or are about to expire, a situation that, in addition to affecting the continuity of the service in these, puts at risk the right to food of more than 652,964 boys, girls and adolescents. The entities that are in this situation are Sabaneta, Sogamoso, Zipaquirá and Cartago since they ended their contract in March. A similar situation occurs with Amazonas, Bello, La Estrella, Soledad, Cartagena, Duitama, Florencia, Cauca, Cundinamarca, Fusagasugá, Villavicencio, Norte de Santander, San Andrés and Providencia, Barrancabermeja, Bucaramanga, Girón, Piedecuesta, Ibagué, Cali and Valle del Cauca where some contracts have already ended and others are about to end in this month of April. Added to the critical situation of uncertainty in the continuity of the PAE are the municipalities and departments of Itagüí, Bolívar, Boyacá, Casanare, Funza, Girardot, Mosquera, Magdalena, Nariño, Putumayo and Vichada, where the contracts end in the month of May. ”
Faced with the brief statement, the Technical Subdirectorate of the Department’s School Feeding Program indicated that its operation is guaranteed, through resources from the common purse and those provided by non-certified municipalities to guarantee the completion of the first semester. For the operation from June onwards, the royalty project for 50 billion pesos is already underway, of which they received observations and are adjusting them, to wait for its approval and thus have the resources for the supply of the PAE in the second semester of 2024.
It is important to mention that the Secretary of Education of Boyacá, in a circular dated April 18, 2024, informed the territorial entities that it is the obligation of the municipalities to continue guaranteeing the PAE in all public institutions in the department of Boyacá. “Once the execution of the supply of the School Feeding Program with resources from the Municipality is completed, the Program will continue under the project financed with resources from the General Royalties System, which is in the feasibility stage.” Likewise, they must quickly and timely send the corresponding documents for the supervisor contract, in order to carry out timely monitoring of the operation of the School Feeding Program.
Non-certified municipalities, once the current inter-administrative agreement that is operating the PAE has ended, will have 32 school calendar days to finance and continue the program normally.
Freddy Giovanny González Castro
Share the best news
