School Feeding Programme: Manager Laments Rising Cost of Foodstuff

Rising inflationary rate resulting in high cost of foodstuffs is affecting Federal Government’s National Home Grown School Feeding Programme negatively.

The assertion was made in Calabar on Monday by Mr Gab Okulaja, Programme Manager of the programme in Cross River when he spoke with newsmen.

Okulaja appealed to the Federal Government to review the school feeding programme to take care of inflationary trends as it planned to add five million beneficiaries to the existing nine million.

“We have the challenge of increase in the prices of foodstuffs by as much as 100 per cent and the payments to cooks are at the same rates as they were in 2016/17 when the programme began.

“There should be a review of meal cost per child to address the rising inflation rate and increase in prices of foodstuffs as this is a major clog in delivering on the programme’s mandate,’’ he said.

Okulaja also advised the Federal Government to also accommodate pre-primary school classes that were not part of the programme.

“There should be a policy change to accommodate early child education which the programme left out.

“Since we are embarking on enumeration and expansion, this is an opportunity for the president to direct that children in this group be included,’’ he added.

A total of 280,000 pupils currently benefit from the programme in 1,000 schools in Cross River.

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