Cabinet decided yesterday to suspend government-issued school meals for the remainder of the academic year and will bring back the program at the beginning of the upcoming academic year, according to a statement. Prime Minister Sherif Ismail met with the committee tasked with reviewing the school meal program after hundreds of school children fell ill due to food poisoning from the meals, which said that samples taken from the meals did not conclusively determine the cause of the outbreak. According to the committee’s report, the food poisoning cases affected one out of every 100,000 students nationwide.

The Finance Ministry and Social Solidarity Ministry also signed an agreement to restructure the Finance Ministry’s EGP 56 bn debts to the government employees’ pension fund.