Grace Poe seeks extra P2-B budget for school feeding program

Sen. Grace Poe is pushing for an additional outlay of P2 billion to the Department of Education’s (DepEd) budget for its school feeding program next year to trim the backlog in school kitchens and storage equip- ment in public schools.

‘Huge backlog’

Poe yesterday said the P2-billion supplementary funding was important to ensure that 2.5 million schoolchildren suffering from chronic malnutrition will be sufficiently supported next year.

To ensure the proper feed- ing of malnourished students, Poe said there was a need to address the “huge backlog” in food preparation and storage equipment in schools, which can hamper the agency’s mission to provide education and nutrition to schoolchildren.

“There must be sufficient facilities to prepare healthy and safe food for the millions of children under the school feeding program,” said the senator, who has been advocating to institutionalize the school-based feeding program.

Earlier, she pointed out that the DepEd was expected to revert to National Treasury some P21 billion in expired and unuti- lized appropriations by the end of the year.

She had proposed that a portion of this amount should instead be diverted for the procurement of kitchen facilities such as easy-to-acquire stoves, refrigerators and ovens, emphasizing that these items should be given the same status and importance as books, computers and wash facilities.

For next year, the DepEd allocated P5.3 billion to feed wasted and severely wasted Kinder to Grade 6 public school students one meal a day for 120 days. For this year, the agency had allotted P3.9 billion to feed 1.8 million students.