Windhoek
Despite government’s praiseworthy goal to ensure every destitute child, especially in rural areas, has a meal at school in order to concentrate in class, some primary schools still do not benefit from the Namibia School Feeding Programme.
The Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture has confirmed that not every school-going child in rural areas accesses food from the school-feeding programme.
New Era has it on good authority that some schools in rural areas, especially in the drought-stricken Kunene Region, do not have feeding-scheme programmes.
Access to education is supported through the provision of a mid-morning meal to more than 320 000 beneficiaries through the feeding programme that amounts to more than N$104 million annually in budgetary terms.
Last year the ministry spent around N$96 million of the N$104 million budget for the programme. For the current 2016/17 financial year, an amount of N$107 million has been budgeted. When asked what the ministry is doing in this regard, Education, Arts and Culture Permanent Secretary Sanet Steenkamp admitted that although the scheme is running in most schools in urban and rural areas, not all primary schools benefit.
She said for a school to qualify for the feeding programme, a school should contact the regional directorate in its region and complete a school baseline survey indicating that it has or will have access to cooking and storage facilities.
According to her, community participation should also be clearly outlined and once the school has completed the survey, the application will be considered to determine whether it is eligible to participate in the scheme.
In the interim, Steenkamp said, the ministry is experiencing challenges with the blending of maize meal due to a scarcity of maize in the country and also due to maize prices, which have increased drastically since December 2015. With the current price increases, she said the budget for the programme is expected to increase by N$42 million.
According to her, the programme remains one of the ministry’s key priorities to ensure that Namibian children not only access education, but do not stay away from school due to hunger.