The Delta State Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency (DEMSMA) has explained the reason for the delay in kicking off the state’s chapter of the Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programme of the Federal Government in schools across the 25 local government areas of the state.
The agency had highlighted the programme to the people of the state late last year, and it was expected that by now each school child in the state schools would have started benefitting from it. A child is expected to a plate of meal at N70.00 a day; but that programme is yet to kick off in Delta, even as the current academic session is far spent.
According to Shimite Bello, DEMSMA’s executive secretary, there were issues with the documents of the caterers who were selected for the programme. She said over 10,000 caterers in the state had applied to be part of the programme and 1,600 of them were selected.
She, however, lamented that about 1,000 of the women who were selected had issues with their Bank Verification Number (BVN) because they either used their husband’s or children’s BVN; explaining that the schedule for payment of money to the caterers to commence the cooking was already out, but they cannot access the money due to issue of BVN.
She assured that the errors have been corrected following which the programme would now kick off soon in the state.
Bello spoke during a town-hall meeting at Koko, Warri North Local Government Area of the state, where DEMSMA interacted with stakeholders, with the aim of enlightening and sensitizing them on the state’s and Federal Government’s programme of prosperity to all Deltans.
The essence of the Home-Grown School Feeding programme is to feed the school children. The caterers are not given loans, but given grants to cater for the feeding. The only time money would no longer be given them is when they are not feeding the children, or when they are not doing what they are supposed to do. They are not paying anybody back. They are going to be given money to feed the number of children they have in their schools, the DEMSMA boss said.
Bello explained that the HGSF programme would empower the communities – farmers, caterers, as well as the children, who would all receive one free hot meal every day.
During the town hall meeting, she encouraged the women to plant vegetables in their backyards to enable them make more profit from the programme.
“One of the things every meal will have is vegetable – either green or spinach. It means that the caterers would have to buy these vegetables every day. Whether they are cooking yam porridge, plantain porridge or jollof rice, for it to be balanced, we are going to introduce vegetable,” said Bello, in an interview with BusinessDay.
She spoke on encouraging women to plant ugu [fluted pumpkin], spinach, tomatoes and pepper since most of these grow easily. “They already know what they need per term. So, if they all have these gardens, they would all save money so that what they would need to buy is yam, plantain, rice and other things they don’t have.”
The Home-Grown School Feeding Programme is one of programmes in the Federal Government’s Social Investment Programmes (SIP) being implemented in Delta State, following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) by the two parties under Governor Ifeanyi Okowa’s administration. The scheme would last for two years.
Other programmes in the SIP scheme include: Cash Transfer to the very poor, the sick, the elderly and the physically challenged; the N-Power aims at paying the youths N30,000 monthly for two years, as they are deployed to schools, hospitals, or agriculture depending on what they take. Or technical and vocation or artisans but they would be paid for two years and given a device with which they would use to get their training materials and every other thing they need to use.
The N-power Programme consists of N-health, N-Agro, N-Teach and N-Community. The Government Empowerment and Employment Programme (GEEP) has to do with traders, enterprising youths and artisans, who are given loans of between N10,000 and N100,000 repayable within six months.
