ANGRY dinner ladies at a Blackburn primary school have slammed catering company BET for cutting their hours.

Mrs Yvette Natha and Mrs Lynn Pickup, who work in the kitchen at St Anne's RC Primary on Fielden Street, say they are having to do the same work in less hours.

"It is different in each kitchen but ours has lost two-and-a-half hours," said Lynn.

"We'll still have to do the same work and they are relying on our morals to do it.

"At the end of the day it will be the children who'll suffer."

Mrs Natha added: "We already lost 10 hours when BET took over the contract.

"They are just walking all over us. These private companies seem to get away with doing what they want."

The dinner ladies added that they even had to contribute to their holiday pay.

BET, which has been taken over by pest control firm Rentokil, recently narrowly avoided a strike over pay by its 3,000 dinner staff in the county.

However, a BET spokeswoman said the amount of hours worked by dinner ladies was based on the number of meals being sold in each individual school.

"We believe the current hours allocated to staff to run kitchens are practical," she said.

"They are based on a long-standing formula which is also comparable to similar contracts we operate elsewhere in the country."

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