FG FCT school feeding FCT takes off Jan – Dep dir

The Deputy Director, School Health, of the FCT Education Secretariat, Mrs. Victoria Aleogena, has said the Federal Government’s National Home-Grown School Feeding (NHGSF) programme will commence in the FCT in January, 2019.

Mrs. Aleogena, who is also the Programme Manager of the FCT-NHGSF, made the disclosure during an interview with newsmen on Friday in Abuja.

She said 120,300 pupils from primaries one to three were being targeted to benefit from the free feeding programme and that the pupils would be drawn from 626 public primary schools across the six area councils of the territory and would be fed once daily with meals containing the six required nutrients.

She stressed the need for the food vendors, community leaders and stakeholders in the FCT to assist the Federal Government in lifting the burden off indigent parents.

“Already, we have done the state level sensitisation, and that was to tell the FCT residents that the programme is basically coming out. And hopefully, the school feeding programme will kickstart in the FCT come January 2019,” she said.

She added that the programme would carry everyone along, especially parents, teachers and traditional and community leaders, who were the gatekeepers, while the vendors would prepare the meals.

Aleogena also assured that the process of selecting the 1,200 vendors would be transparent and based on high standards to ensure good hygiene.

“Besides, we informed the would-be vendors to collect forms. These forms are free. All they need to do is to get to the Local Education Authority (LEA) secretaries in the area councils and collect them,” she said.

She assured that the meals would include bread, beans, eggs, rice, yam, sweet potatoes and fish.