No fewer than 10,549 women cooks have been recruited for the Federal Government’s Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) in Katsina State, an official disclosed.
Dr. Mudassir Nasir, Coordinator, Katsina Social Investment Programme Agency (KASIPA), made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Katsina.
NAN reports that NHGSFP is part of the intervention of the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) being implemented by the federal government in the state through the agency.
Nasir said the women food vendors would be preparing food for over 1 million pupils for primary one to three across the state.
According to the coordinator, the pupils are drawn from 2,700 existing public primary schools across the 34 Local Government Areas of the state.
Nasir explained that the essence of the programme was to provide nutritional diet to pupils to enhance school enrollment.
He added that the programme was also designed to empower local farmers and businesses by enhancing their socio-economic growth and development.
“We have already revalidated the cooks. The cooks and other stakeholders will be sensitised to the effective implementation.
“In view of the measures put in place, we are hopeful, previous challenges will not be repeated,” he said.
Nasir also revealed that over 143,000 poorest households would benefit from the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) in the state.
He added that the number of beneficiaries would increase “as the programme now covers all the 34 local government areas.
“Another NSIP intervention is the N-Power programme, with the aim of exposing youth graduates to public and private sector experiences.”
Nasir also said the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme was introduced to empower small and medium enterprises.
“Government will support them with interest-free loans to enhance their businesses. Under this intervention, we have a farmerMoni, traderMoni and marketMoni.
“All arrangements have been concluded to continue with all these interventions, meant to reduce the citizens’ hardship and enhance economic growth and development in the state and the country at large,” he said.
