Bauchi Govt settles N421m school feeding debts

Bauchi Govt settles N421m school feeding debts.

The Bauchi State Government says it has settled the backlog of N421 million direct school feeding debts to contractors to ensure regular supply of food to students.

Dr Aliyu Tilde, the state Commissioner for Education, made this known in an interview in Bauchi on Monday.

He said government has introduced food monitors in boarding secondary schools involved in the project to ensure supply and delivery of quality food items to the schools.

He said that the food monitor policy has significantly brought sanity in the project as students are now being properly and adequately fed with good and quality meals.

According to him, the ministry has engaged private marketers for the supply of foodstuffs to ensure efficient and maximum control on regular supply of food to schools.

He explained that government recently engaged the services of the Amalgamated Bauchi traders and Artisans Multipurpose Cooperative Union Ltd., to handle supplies and delivery of food items to the schools.

“I commend their resilience and punctuality as their performance has changed the narratives for the better,” he said.

He noted that N4.2 million was recently generated as revenue collected from proprietors of private schools as their annual renewal and purchase of application forms.

“We achieved this feat through constant checking on the private schools obligations before clearance,” he added.

Tilde said government created additional Area Education Offices, involved School Managers in Policy making and directed all schools to intensify efforts in teaching of the 3RS (Reading, Writing and Arithmetic subjects).

The Bauchi State government recently trained no fewer than 1,200 teachers on teaching methodology of key subjects which include Physics, Chemistry and Biology to boost their performances.