Food Vendors May Ditch School Feeding Over Delay In Payment

Food vendors under the National Home-grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP), said the delay in payment by the Federal Government was drastically affecting the students’ attendance.
This was disclosed by one of the food vendors, who asked not to be named, in an interview with newsmen at the official handing over of 150,000 feeding utensils to the Jigawa State Government held at Sir Nuhu Sanusi Primary School, Dutse.
She said the Federal Government introduced the programme aimed at increasing enrolment rates of the pupils, improve the nutritional and health status of primary school children, boost the income of farmers and provide empowerment opportunities for women.
“Government introduced the program in order to increase students’ enrollment and empowered women but the delay in the payment of the money to food vendors by the Federal Government is causing a setback to the programme.
“Whenever Federal Government paid the money for the program the students’ attendance increased significantly when compared to the months Federal Government didn’t make any payment.
“For the first and second term, we were paid for only one month instead of three months or four months in a term,” she stated.
She advised the Federal Government that the payment should never be delayed for any reason if the Federal Government wants to achieve success in the programme.
Speaking after handing over the feeding utensils to the Jigawa State Government, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Mrs. Sadiya Umar Farouk, said the Federal Government had recorded over nine million pupils on the program being fed by over 100,000 cooks across the nation.
Represented by the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Alhaji Nura Alkali, she said that in Jigawa State alone, the feeding programme was taking place in 2,180 primary schools, involving 490,874 pupils, 5,267 cooks in 27 LGA across the state.
He said the ministry had set out strategies to strengthen the programme with a view to making it sustainable and institutionalized into the structure of the government’s social protection mechanism.
“We identified the strategic areas in the programme that needed to be reviewed to accommodate current realities. Some key areas identified include improving meal quality, capacity development of all actors in the value chain, building strategic partnerships to achieve sustainability, and many other areas,” the permanent secretary said.