National Telescope national telescope newspaper
Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar-Farouq, has said the feeding for school children at home will commence this week.
She said the takeoff of the programme will be done in Lagos State, Ogun State and Kano State.
The minister said this on Saturday, 9th May, 2020 during an event where she flagged off the distribution of relief items to persons living with disabilities at Karimajiji in Abuja.
Recall that Umar-Farouq had earlier announced on Wednesday that the Federal Government, in partnership with states, was set to start the feeding of school children in their various homes.
“By next week (this week) we are going to start off with the FCT (Federal Capital Territory), Lagos and Ogun states, then Kano.
“We have done all the processes and by early next week (this week) we will be able to start. The model is to give food ration to the households where these children come from. We have identified them, we know their communities and we know all the households.”
The Minister had earlier said food ration would be distributed door-to-door, with vouchers allocated at specific collection times to avoid overcrowding.
She had also stated that the vouchers would be redeemed at designated distribution centres.
Asked to state the number of collection centres where beneficiaries would pick up their vouchers, the minister said, “We are reaching out to 3.1 million households.
“It is in that place where we are going to keep the food ration that we will distribute the vouchers and then they will come to pick up their own ration.”
On the distribution of relief items at Karimajiji, Umar-Farouq said over 1,000 persons would benefit from the support.
She said, “We are here today to start the distribution of relief items to beneficiaries. We have chosen to commence this here because Karimajiji represents one of the most organised and recognised communities of persons with special needs.
“As a follow-up to today’s event, we shall also be visiting other communities and clusters of persons with special needs to provide them with the same relief materials.”
Umar-Farouq said, “These relief items are going to household members and they have been identified. Each household gets one bag of rice, 5kg bag of sugar, five litres of vegetable oil, a packet of magi, sachets of salts, macaroni, six yards of wrapper, etc.
“In this very community, we are attending to 460 households and that means over 1,000 individuals. We will extend this to other states.”
(Punch)
