State mulls assessing food supply to schools for first term of 2020
The Ministry of Education is in the process of assessing the status of food that had been supplied to schools before they were closed in March.
Education Principal Secretary, Dr Belio Kipsang said yesterday that by the time schools were closed, food supply for First Term had been fully covered.
“Education officials are out to check the status of the food because it is dry food mainly rice, maize and beans.
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We are working with other arms of Government including the Ministry of Agriculture to properly secure this food so that when schools re-open again in January, it will have been properly secured and will be available for our children,” said Belio.
Homegrown
He said that there are two levels of the school feeding programme the first being homegrown concept.
Under the homegrown programme, Belio said money is sent to schools and then respective institutions, through the local community, get supply of the food.
The homegrown programme is applicable in agricultural areas.
For the arid areas where it is difficult for schools to buy food, Belio said the Government purchase for them.
“In the arid areas where it is difficult for the schools to buy food we usually do this ourselves as Government so that we can take advantage of bulk economies to be able to get enough food. By the time schools were closed, the food had been placed to the nearest levels of schools,” added Belio.
To this end, Belio said the Government will disburse funds for homegrown programme at an appropriate time when schools report back.
“The children are quite a number and as we go to January we can get more food.
We are trying to introduce fortified foods mainly for the young children for Grade Three and below for proper nutrition for growth of their mental capacity,” said Belio.
He reiterated that the Ministry will follow to the letter, protocols developed to mitigate against coronavirus disease.
Belio said schools can only resume when the coronavirus infection curve consistently falls for at least 14 days, amid projections that this may happen after September.
“Ministry of Health model showed that the peak maybe around September. September is around the time we wanted to open our schools but we cannot do this when the curve is rising,” he said.
The Ministry is optimistic that the infection curve will have stabilised by January and the disease fully managed. ment will have been understood better.
