A dozen mothers of children at a school in Tsing Yi donned aprons to whip up meals for 170 pupils and teachers on Monday, after a food poisoning scare left thousands of students across the city without their usual lunchboxes.

Luncheon Star, a subsidiary of fast food chain Café de Coral, warned last week that it would not provide lunchboxes to more than 200 schools on Monday and Tuesday, while it thoroughly cleans its production lines.

The move comes after cases of food poisoning were reported at a school in Tuen Mun.

On a Commercial Radio programme, the principal of Yan Chai Hospital Chiu Tsang Hok Wan Primary School in Tsing Yi, Augustine Chen, said the parent-teacher association had decided to rope in parents to make sure the children don't go hungry.

“The books always tell students to face difficulties bravely and overcome them. But children would look at how principals and teachers deal with adversity as well,” Chen said.

“Through this incident, I would like to show students that students and parents would work together to solve problems, and we would face difficulties squarely and overcome them too.”

He added, however, that he did not know what food the children would be getting.

“I leave it all to the parents, I trust them. We are talking about parent-teacher collaboration. If I try to micro-manage everything, nothing will get done.”

Meanwhile, lawmaker and vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers, Tang Fei, said it would not have been too difficult for other lunchbox suppliers to step in and save the day.

“Can other suppliers intervene immediately? I haven’t heard of such arrangements before, but I believe they are able to do so, especially the major ones. I think it wouldn’t be too difficult for them to add a few more schools,” Tang said on an RTHK programme.