A total of 1,700 caterers in Delta State are being trained to feed 433,000 children in the public schools across the 25 local government areas of the state and Delta State Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency (DEMSMA) says the training is aimed at ensuring that quality caterers cook the food.
Speaking in Warri shortly after the training of caterers in Delta South Senatorial Zone, the agency’s boss, Shimite Bello told journalists that the state governor, Ifeanyi Okowa was desirous of quality caterers who could cook good food for the state’s chapter of the Home Grown School Feeding Programme of the Federal Government’s social investment programme.
“The whole essence of today’s meeting is because we are about to feed the children and the governor would not allow us feed the children unless we are sure of the quality of the caterers, making sure they really have what they need to have in order to take care of the kids properly.
“So, we’ve come up with the plan of training the caterers on how to measure, how to cook the food and then most importantly for them to be sensitised that we have to buy certain things for them. Bello said money would be borrowed to buy the things in bulk. “We have to spell it out that we are looking for things like crayfish, yams, and sweet potatoes etc to buy so that whatever money we get, we put it back in the system.”
The training billed to hold in the three senatorial zones of the state kicked off Tuesday, March 14, 2017, for Delta South Senatorial zone with a good turnout of caterers at Nana College, Warri, the zonal venue. Bello said 560 caterers were trained in the zone and that they were made up of caterers from the eight local government areas in the Delta South Senatorial Zone. In all, 1,700 caterers are being trained across the three senatorial zones to feed 433,000 children, she said.
Honeywell Flour Mills Limited was on ground to demonstrate to the caterers on how best to cook their products – spaghetti, macroni and noodles.
Bello also explained to journalists why pasta had to be introduced in the Home-Grown Feeding Programme, saying there were not enough products that would help in ensuring that the children get varieties in their meals, therefore pasta had to be introduced as back up.
“We tried to aggregate a lot of yam. About 500,000 tubers would work for us with sweet potatoes. These were products we were told are available but at a closer range, the only thing we found was plantain and so, it would be difficult for us to give the children varieties. So, we need a back-up until we improve on production of food as the governor is working hard to ensure the people of the state move from subsistence farming to farming enough to sell,” she said.
“So, we have spoken to states like Ebonyi and others to see if we can have more rice to enable us have back-ups so that we can feed the children daily but where we cannot get enough, we would do our best to ensure the children are given quality food daily.”
She said that the training had been done before but because of the introduction of the backups, it has to be done again.
“We thought we can have everything but now we have found out we haven’t enough. That is why we are introducing the back-ups”, she said.
She further explained that part of the sensitisation was to also let the caterers know those who have been cleared and those who were yet to be cleared so that they would be able to do the necessary documentation so that the programme would commence immediately.
Speaking at the training, the Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, Chinedu Ebie said the essence of the training was to draw attention to how to cook the food well to suit the purpose for which the programme was made.
Ebie, who was represented by the Director (PPP) in the ministry, Moses Brangiwa also explained that the essence of the programme was to draw children to school and help them eat balanced diet and urged the caterers to make good use of the opportunity presented by the training.
Ebele Oluwalana, Customer & Channel Marketing manager, Honeywell Flour Mills Plc, had in her speech thanked the state government for the opportunity and assured that the company would do its part in teaching the caterers the qualitative ways of preparing their products to suit the programme.
