Student lunch probe shows school director seriously violated official Code of Conduct

The former director of Ban Thamai school in Tha Chana district of Surat Thani was initially found to have seriously violated the civil service disciplinary code over the student lunch project and might be suspended pending further probe by a disciplinary committee.

This was disclosed by Lt-Gen Kosol Prathumchat, and advisor to the Education Minister, after he led a team of senior educational officials to visit the school and inspect the students’ lunch yesterday in Surat Thani.

The team intended to find out whether there were any corruption practices in the school lunch project after the kindergarten students there were found to be provided with poor quality food  with no nutrition.

The students were reported to be given  only fermented rice noodles and fish sauce although the government has allocated budget to finance the free lunch project for  students.

Lt-Gen Kosol later revealed that initial investigation found that  the school director, Somchao Sithichen, now transferred out of the area,  was found to have seriously violated  the Code of Standards and Behaviour of civil servants in five counts.

Not only he was found to provide low quality food for students, he was also found to be involved in other irregularities, including selling of soft drinks on the campus in violation of a prohibition order, selling products from palm trees, a road construction project , and installing  light poles in the school, he said

He said although soda pop is not so serious but it violates the Office of the Basic Education Commissions rules that ban the selling of such drinks at school.

He said it was obvious that the former school director committed the offences for his own benefits and these irregularities were  serious enough to  punish him.

After this, a discipline committee will be set up and will start working on Monday, he said