FG hands over 20, 000 cooking utensils to beneficiaries of national school feeding programme in Ebonyi



The Federal Government has handed over 20,000 cooking utensils to beneficiaries of National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) in Ebonyi state.

The items will be used in feeding of 64, 301 pupils across 561 participating primary schools in the state.

A total of 762 cooks have been recruited for effective implementation of the programme in line with the federal government's educational enhancement policy.

Mrs Sadiya Farouq, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development said that the NHGSFP is one of the 4 key policies of the federal government under the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP)

"This programme seeks to boost school enrollment, nutrition and local economic activities in thousands of communities across the nation.

"The programme at its core, is designed to address poverty in all its forms and is a collaboration between the federal government and the state government.

"The federal government under this programme, is responsible for the release of funds, guidelines policies, and monitoring, while the state carries out the day-to-day implementation.

"This implementation include: procurement of food items, selection of cooks and vendors who prepare, cook and serve the meals to the pupils," she said.

The minister said the benefits of the programme and its impact on the lives and livelihood of individuals, groups and communities is clear, evident and undeniable.

"In addressing cross cutting issues of hunger, malnutrition and poverty, we have, thus, far recorded over 9 million pupils on the programme being fed by over 100,000 cooks.

"Employment is being created within the school feeding ecosystem in sectors of transportation and manufacturing," she said.

She noted that her ministry was happy to inform Nigerians that it has commenced the deployment of interventions within the NHGSFP that will help resolve the identified gaps including a nationwide enumeration exercise.

"This exercise has the objective of verifying existing data, upgrading the quality of data, and updating records to accommodate the scaling up of the programme with an additional 5 million beneficiaries as directed by the nation's president.

"Additionally, an operational review is underway, fully supported by experts and technical partners to ensure that this programme succeeds in its objectives.

"It also intends to capitalize on gains and benefits such as women empowerment, supporting the education of the girl child, creating employment, and improving inter-governmental cooperation and collaboration.

"This intervention is thus, only one out of the several strategic plans of our ministry that seeks to ensure that the target pupils have the best experience of hygiene and safety during their consumption of those free meals," she said.

Mrs Ann Aligwe, Ebonyi Commissioner for Human Capital Development, thanked the federal government for the programme, noting that the state government will play its part in ensuring its success.

"This programme has complemented the state government's efforts in enhancing the nutritional wellbeing of pupils and students to get the best from them academically," she said.

Goodwill messages were delivered on the occasion by the benefiting schools and stakeholders in the state's and national nutritional sectors.

FG no pay me my balance up till now yeye fifu mtchew