Government is set to resume the school feeding programme when schools open for the third term next week in the wake of an El Nino-induced drought that has left millions of households food insecure.
Speaking during the Food Deficit Mitigation Strategy and the Lean Season Assistance Lessons Learnt workshop held in Masvingo last week, Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare ministry’s chief director of Social Development Tawanda Zimhunga said government aimed to have grain in schools before learners return to school.
“The school feeding programme will resume when schools open, but due to limited resource, it will focus on primary schools for now,” said Zimhunga.
According to the recently released Zimbabwe Livelihoods Assessment Report nationally, only 7,5% of children received a hot meal at school with Matabeleland North province having the highest proportion of children who received a hot meal (29,8%).
Most schools are struggling to raise money to transport the grain from the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) as well as money to process the grain.
Shylet Shero, a mother of three from Mwenezi, welcomed the move by the government to provide grain in schools.
“A lot of schoolchildren have been dropping out from school due to the El Niño-induced drought and their performances have been bad, our children have been going to school on empty stomachs.
“The introduction of school feeding schemes will greatly improve school attendance and children’s performances, we really welcome this initiative,” Shero said.
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GMB acting chief operations director Patric Muzwimbiri said they had the capacity to mill the grain and use the cluster approach to distribute it to schools.
“The cluster approach is when we piggyback on the FDMS [Food Deficit Mitigation Strategy] grain if we are distributing FDMS grain in a certain district, we also carry the school grains,” he said.
“Milling of school grain will be completed by September 30.”
Government is set to engage World Food Programme (WFP) on the issue of food distribution.
“We have discussed ways of improving our school feeding programme with WFP, and they have come to my office with some proposals. WFP can help us with proper storage facilities, let’s strategise and ensure that things move,” Zimhunga said.
Meanwhile, government has expressed concern over theft of grain by some officers in several districts across the country.
Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare minister July Moyo said: “The President is trying hard to provide food for every insecure person but some people are taking advantage and stealing from that assistance, it has to stop.”
