The Kogi State Government said it had recruited about 2, 200 caterers to handle cooking in the first and second phases of the Home Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSFP) in the state.
Special Adviser to the Governor, on Special Projects and Kogi SIP Focal Person, Mr Abdulkareem Onyekehi,
disclosed this at a sensitisation programme and official resumption of HGSFP, organised for the recruited caterers in the state.
He noted that the pilot phase of the HGSFP implementation began in Kogi on Feb. 8, 2019, with 62,559 pupils in public schools in 18 LGAs, but was later suspended due to issues of non adherence to the national guidelines in some North Central states.
He, however, said that Kogi State had been cleared by the national office to resume the HGSFP, which was officially inaugurated on Sunday.
According to him, a total of 850 caterers were already captured, recruited and trained for the programme, while additional 1, 296 caterers have been recruited in batch B to join the batch A.
”It means that more hundreds of schools and thousands of pupils would be captured, more jobs would be created and many others to benefit from the economic value chain of the programme.
”A very sensitive programme of this magnitude covering almost the entire state is not one to be handled with levity.
”Hence, we have put in place, our Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) team, to monitor various schools on a daily basis, to see that the caterers perform their work in line with national guidelines”, he said.
In his remarks, Gov. Yahaya Bello,who was represented by Edward Onoja, encouraged the caterers to do their job diligently, and not ‘cut corners’, saying the feeding was meant for children and not adults.
He urged the women to go back to their various communities to mobilise support for the governor’s reelection on Nov. 16, saying he believed in the power of women.
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