School meals: 147,867 pupils eat, 142,133 watch in Plateau schools
The number of children going to nursery and primary schools is said to have increased in the last 10 months since Plateau State joined the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme.
The state began feeding pupils in July 2017 with about 1,400 food vendors, out of 4,473 expected to be engaged. The number of vendors has since, however increased to 2,007 feeding about 147,867 pupils in public primary schools across the 17 LGAs in the state.
However, the remaining 2,466 vendors whose bank account details are still undergoing scrutiny of validation due to BVN mismatch, still pose challenges to the programme because about 142,133 other pupils are yet to be captured for.
The State Focal Person of the Social Investment Programme (SIP), Dr. Sumaye Fadimatu Hamza, said all schools in the state have been enrolled in the programme with about N103,506,900 spent on feeding for 10 days which translated to N10,350,690 per day for 2,007 cooks who prepare meals for 147,867 pupils.
Fatimatu Maji Usman, the Assistant Headmistress of LEA Primary School Ungwan Rogo in Jos, the state capital, said there was 30 percent increase in pupils’ enrolment since the commencement of the programme, adding that, “sometimes even children from the community come around to beg for the food.”
Daily Trust gathered that only vendors who have been screened are paid to supply meals to feed an exact number of children that they are expected to cater for.
Dr. Hamza explained that “vendors can only service the number of pupils they have been paid for, they cannot go beyond the number. For the other vendors still going through screening, their own allocation cannot be serviced because it is attached to them and attached to their accounts.”
However, our correspondent who visited LEA Pilot Primary School in Tudun Wada, Jos North LGA, gathered that the vendors only appeared for four weeks throughout last term.
The head teacher of the school, Akutse Lekyes Kwarkas, said, “At the beginning, the vendors told us they were given N48,000 to feed 70 pupils each and we have about 90 children in a class so they tried to ration the food to ensure everyone was fed but after two weeks, they told us the money had finished and so they disappeared until two weeks to the end of the term when they returned with some of them saying they were paid money for 47 children.”
He said initially, 12 vendors prepared food for the pupils but said their number dropped to four when they returned shortly before the term ended. “They stopped coming until they heard that President Buhari was coming to Jos, then they appeared and that was only two weeks before vacation,” he said.
The head teacher, however, said enrolment into their school has increased as many parents withdrew their children from private schools to public schools.
The state SIP focal person, Dr. Hamza, expressed worry that not all the children could be served meals at present. She however added that her office was working hard to ensure that the challenges with the vendors were sorted out before the first year anniversary of the programme.
She explained that the increase in the number of children going to school was also linked to the conditional cash transfer for the poorest of the poor in Bassa, Jos East, Kanke, Bokkos, Wase and Langtang North LGAs, adding that many of the beneficiaries had narrated how the money had enabled them provide basic needs for their children to go back to school.
“So the cash transfer component is linked to the school feeding and also linked to enrolment because when the children go to school, they will be fed and so enrolment has increased. The parents are happy and the children are not idle.
“Some of the children have decided to take themselves to school without anybody going through the process of enrolling them while some hide a little bit of the food to take home. So because of that, those at home have decided to also come to school,” she stated.
While speaking on the nutritional value of the meals, Dr. Hamza who is also an Executive Assistant to Governor Simon Bako Lalong, explained that the menu was developed by a multi-sectoral team with representatives from the ministries of health, education, agric, and other representatives based on food crops produced in the state and the nutritional value of the ingredients to be used.
She said: “For instance on Mondays, we have potato porridge with vegetables but the southern zone of the state gives yam porridge with vegetables which is an alternate because yam is produced more in the area.”
Though the feeding programme is yet to commence for the third term, Dr. Hamza has assured that vendors would soon start receiving payment.