...Bauchi to improve school feeding programme
The federal government has resumed the School Feeding Programme in Gombe state six months after its stoppage.
A teacher in one of the affected schools had last week appealed to the government to resume the programme, saying that the stoppage has led to significant decline in school attendance in the state.
The State Consultant of the programme, Alhaji Abubakar Ibrahim Zannah, who spoke with our correspondent on behalf of the Director Administration and Finance, Alh Hassan Hamma, said the reason why the progamme was suspended was because of the non-payment of vendors by the national office of the Social Investment Programme.
Abubakar Zannah, said now that the payment had been made to the vendors, the programme had resumed for another four weeks, starting from September 23.
He said all the food vendors had been paid their backlog of claims.
According to him, about 340,966 pupils in 1,353 primary schools across the state are benefiting.
“We in the state office in collaboration with some NGO’s we do checks and monitoring of the quality of food that is served to the pupils,’’ he added
Zannah, further explained that, while conducting their duties, they had encountered various challenges of hard to reach areas in some LGA’s, like Jigawar Nafada in Nafada local government area, and Galdimaru in Shongom LGA.
One of the food vendors operating at Jalo Waziri Primary School, Gombe, Hussaina Lamido, commended federal the government for resuming the programme, which she said is encouraging the children to come to school early.
Hussaina Lamido said she was initially assigned to serve 70 pupils but is now feeding 90 pupils because many of them have returned to the school.
Bello Hamza, who is the Head Teacher of the school, welcomed the resumption of the program.
He said since its resumption the school has not recorded a case of stomach illness or headache which the pupils were often complaining of.
He also said school attendance has improved because of the food being provided.
Habiba Shu’aibu Sa’idu, and Hussaini Haruna Hassan, both pupils in Jalo Waziri Primary School, also commended the federal government for resuming the programme.
They said although they were still coming to school when the programme was stopped but they noticed many of their colleagues had stopped coming. Bauchi State Government says it will improve the School feeding programme for primary school pupils in the state as part of efforts to ensure sanity and fairness.
The Special Adviser to the Governor on Social Investment Alhaji Madaki Ahmed Gololo, stated this in Bauchi yesterday while interacting with newsmen.
“When we came on board we discovered that initially the federal government released N1 billion every month for the feeding of 800,000 pupils but they reduced it to 400,000 pupils, because they discovered lack of fairness in the entire exercise.
``In some schools they increased the number of students and schools that are not in existence were included in the scheme. When federal government discovered that they reduced the number of pupils from 800,000 to 400,000.
“We held several meetings with the federal government officials and convinced them that the number is not enough and they have increased the number of pupils that will benefit from the programme to 600,000.’’
He said his office has now devised a fair way of sharing about N800,000,000 among the women supplying food to the pupils while another N200,000 000 is being paid to suppliers of meat and fish.
Alhaji Madaki said that his office is working with the federal government to increase the number of pupils to benefit from the programme.