Georgian Education Minister Giorgi Amilakhvari on Thursday pledged to present “a concrete vision and plan for “a large-scale” school nutrition project anytime soon.

“Problems related to school meals have existed for years, and the Ministry is already taking significant measures to solve them,” he told MPs in the Parliament.

“Regarding school meals, [opponents] painted a picture as if we created this problem and it hasn’t existed for at least 30 years. We are sparing no effort to solve this issue by taking real steps.

Of course, specifics may be difficult at this point, but I will tell you about the ministry’s efforts during the last year. In all public/private school cafeterias, we have specified basic sanitary requirements, food safety, as well as a list of products that are permitted or prohibited in the school environment. After consulting with all relevant agencies, we issued an order that essentially regulates the cafeteria problems.

For a comprehensive analysis, we had to undertake extensive research on each school before determining which models to utilize to administer the school meal programs,” the Minister added.