James Warren
VULNERABLE school children in Madrid have been left without fresh fruit after contracted fast food chains refused to strike a deal with a Canary Island banana producer.
Platano de Canarias offered to supply 12,000 fruits three times per week as part of the city’s Minimum Insertion program, a scheme that provides free school dinners to the most needy of children.
Since the State of Alarm began, causing the closure of schools across Madrid, these children were left in the difficult position of possibly forgoing their much needed free meals.
However urgent deals were made between the Community of Madrid and fast food chains Tele Pizza and Madrid based sandwich shop Rodilla to supply pre cooked meals to anyone on the scheme.
Platano de Canarias offered to bolster these meals with the free bananas but without means of point to point distribution, they offered to deliver the bananas to a central point in the city, the large distribution market Meramadrid.
However according to a testimony by manager of Platano de Canarias’ umbrella company, Asprocan, the offer was declined as Mercamadrid was not on the specific drop off list issued by Telepizza and Rodilla.
According to the statement, both Tele Pizza and Rodilla were contacted to discuss the offer, with Tele Pizza not responding and Rodilla failing to come to an agreement for pick up.
Platano de Canarias currently supplies bananas for the free school meals across Andalucia, Extremadura and Castilla La Mancha, as individual school catering companies deal with the deliveries rather than town officials.
Miguel Justribo, executive vice president of Communication at Tele Pizza, told Spanish media that ‘Plátano de Canarias had a logistical problem.’
“That is not my responsibility,” he continued “I just don’t go to Mercamadrid. I distribute from my factory in Daganzo, and Mercamadrid is not on my delivery routes.”
A city council spokesman defended the actions of the two chains, claiming they did everything necessary to reach an agreement and that it was Plantano de Canarias who withdrew the offer.
