Around 203 schools with junior grades received wheat flour from the Oshikoto director of education, with the primary aim of feeding learners daily. The feeding programme benefits approximately 51 706 learners in the region.
Oshikoto education director Aletta Eises confirmed that learners are now being well-fed, which helps with concentration in class and invests the desire of coming to school in them.
She said every semester, her office distributes sacks of wheat flour to schools with Grade One to Grade Nine classes.
At the beginning of semester one, all Oshikoto constituencies received bags of flour for the learners’ porridge.
“We are only left with one school which did not get its portion because that school does not have ideal shelter to store the sacks of flour. Challengingly, they also do not have utensils,” Eises said.
She added that the Oniipa Primary School has 500 learners, compared to other schools. Thus, the flour they received is more than the rest of the schools.
“The Imboto Primary School was given 30 sacks of wheat flour since they have a small number of learners. Clearly, the allocation of sacks is determined by the number of learners per school,” Eises clarified.
Some schools such as the Oshinamumwe Primary School have cultivated gardens, which meets her office halfway as learners harvest extra food for themselves.
“Farmers in the Tsumeb community always give a helping hand by offering food to different schools voluntarily,” Eises said appreciatively.
She added that one of the challenges faced by numerous schools is the lack of storage facilities and eating utensils. This thus impedes her office from giving all the flour at once, as they have no adequate rooms to keep them for later use.
“Some schools make use of the principals’ offices to store the items due to a lack of shelter,” Eises continued.
She said currently, her office is busy constructing classrooms for specific schools which are short of teaching space.
“I am urging business people, local government and private institutions to help out schools with the food distribution and construction of extra classrooms as these are the current major concerns faced by schools,” the director said.