Home grown school feeding, meant to enrich pupils’ nutritional value —Minister
Barth Ndubuwah, Port Harcourt
The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs,Disaster Management and Social Development has urged state government to cue into home groom school feeding programme in the state.
Mr Charles Ukoh, the Team Leader for National Home Groom School Feeding Programme gave the advice during the enumeration of primary school pupils at the State Primary School 1,Borokiri in Port Harcourt.
Ukoh, who is also a Director in the Ministry, representing the Ministry for Humanitarian Affairs encouraged the state to notify the team when their schools are in session so that Federal Government can release the funds for the pupils feeding.
He said that the essence of the programme is to give the school children good nutritional food at the affirmative age to develop their brains and also help them to be interested in education.
Ukoh said that the team’s mission in the state was to get the total number of pupils that are currently in the data roll of the national home groom school feeding programme.
“Currently, we have about 124,000 pupils in Rivers State all in 963 schools and also 1148 vendors who cook for the school feeding programme.
“The only challenge we will have is when we don’t get the true numbers of pupils from the creeks of Asari Toru and Akuku-Toru.
“The Federal Government provides the funding and State Government employs the cooks and manage the fund,”he explained.
Furthermore, Mr Young Ayo-Tamuno, the State Director, National Orientation Agency(NOA)stated that the problem of out of school children in the state is a serious concern that is why Federal Government is trying to curb it through the feeding scheme by removing the children off from street.
Ayo-Tamuno, said that one of the objectives of the programme is to increase school enrollment.
“What we are doing today is trying to get appropriate data.Those that are benefiting were pupils from one to three, they are about124,000 and this is not good enough for us,” he said.
He urged the media to do investigation on the school feeding programme to know how far government have gone in the school feeding of the pupils in the country.
Mrs Oronneohiarebu Lilian, the Head Teacher of State Primary School 1, Borokiri said that the school feeding scheme is an excellent programme because students who stopped school have enrolled back to school since the introduction of the scheme.
Lilian confirmed that the school feeding vendors are feeding the pupils regularly and called on the Federal Government to increase the number of vendors.
