By Staff Writer
Ministry of Education Minister Douglas Syakalima says his Ministry is feeding 2 Million learners in the country through a plan called Government School feeding programme.
Hon. Syakalima says in order to improve attendance and performance of learners in Schools, his Minister is implementing a home-grown school feeding programme in 70 districts across all 10 provinces.
The programme is being executed by the School, Health and Nutrition (SHN), a Unit in the Ministry of Education, is implementing the home-grown school feeding programme in 70 districts across all 10 provinces.
The Minister said the Home-grown School feeding programme is being implemented in 5,231 schools and benefiting more than 2 million learners.
“In addition, SHN is providing sanitary towels to more than one million learners from an annual allocation of 30 million kwacha.
These interventions see to it that learners do not shun school as a result of hunger or a lack of sanitary facilities.” Hon. Syakalima explained.
Hon. Syakalima was speaking at the 2023 Joint Sector Review (JSR) meeting in Lusaka held under the theme “Accelerating learning under the Education For All (EFA) in Zambia.”
He went on to state that there are other barriers that affect girl child education, such as early marriages and pregnancies.
“In an effort to mitigate these barriers, My Ministry has been implementing the Keeping Girls in School (KGS) initiative in 49 selected districts across the 10 provinces of the country. The project has supported over 130, 000 girls since inception and this year alone 77,964 have been supported.” The Minister said.
The Minister has further explained that the KGS is being scaled-up to 16 additional districts in 2023, bringing the total number of KGS districts to 65.
