FG: Why We Haven’t Paid Cooks For School Feeding Programme

Sadiya Farouq, minister of humanitarian affairs, disaster management and social development, says the cooks engaged under the school feeding programme have not been paid because of change in payment platform.

Speaking through Salihu Dambatta, the ministry’s special adviser on media, Farouq said the ministry is migrating from Remita to the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS).

The minister said the cooks will start getting paid as soon as the migration is completed.

She said the new payment platform would create accountability and transparency.

“With the conclusion of migration to GIFMIS, all pending payments will be effected within days,” Farouq said in a statement.

“The aggregators in the programme have been paid along with the cooks that were captured by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), while payment is outstanding for cooks that were not captured by the NBS.”

The National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP), which began in 2016, is a government project with the aim of “improving the health and educational outcomes of public primary school pupils”.

According to the federal government, over 300 million meals have been served to more than 7.5 million pupils in 46,000 public primary schools across 22 states.