FG Says Cooks for 9.2 Million Children in School Feeding Programme Stood at 103,028

The Federal Government on Friday said 9,196,823 children have so far enrolled on its school feeding programme.

The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar-Farouq, disclosed this during her ministry one-year anniversary in Abuja.

Umar-Farouq said the total number of cooks stood at 103,028. According to her, the total number of children enrolled on the programme was verified by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

She also noted that the Conditional Cash Transfer Programme under the National Social Investment Programme provides targeted monthly cash transfers of N5,000 to poor and vulnerable households.

She said, “It is worthy of note that at the onset of the pandemic, the National Social Register contained data of over 2.6 million poor and vulnerable households (with over 11 million individuals) across 34 states and the FCT.

“With the accelerated registration and rapid expansion, the register has as at June 30 grown to 3.7 million (equivalent to 15.5 million individuals) across 36 states and the FCT.”

Umar-Farouq further stated that the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development had concluded the processes for the development of the COVID-19 Rapid Response Register focusing on the urban poor, semi and semi-urban regions.

She added that the World Bank has provided support in finalisation of the template to filter the poor and vulnerable from various databases for validation and registration.