Oyo State Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Professor Adeniyi Olowofela, has said that some of the 2,578 vendors, who abandoned the feeding programme of the federal government in the state had issues with their Biometric Verification Number (BVN).
Saying that the issues were being resolved, Olowofela stated that 1,332 vendors were currently cooking for 108,000 pupils benefiting from the home grown feeding programme.
He was reacting to Sunday Tribune’s report that caterers engaged under the school feeding progamme for pupils in Oyo State have abandoned the project.
It was learnt that the caterers decided to abandon the programme four weeks ago, following disagreements over the supply of the basic components of the meals for pupils.
They are protesting a decision by the coordinators of the programme to handover the supply of meat, egg and bread to three contractors.
Before now, the vendors had the leeway to source the items privately and pay directly from the bi-weekly disbursement of funds from a new generation commercial bank designated by the authorities.
Attempts by some officials to reach a compromise with the caterers during couple of meetings over the dispute failed because of the alleged insistence of the coordinator on engagement of three individuals to act as the bona fide suppliers of the items.
Some caterers, who spoke to our correspondent and craved anonymity, said the officials insisted that they had hired a baker to supply ‘Sakara bread’ at a price, which they claimed was designed to shortchange the vendors.
Under the new arrangement, the suppliers, who have been officially designated as Mr Meat, Mr Egg and Mr Bread, held a meeting with one of the coordinators on Children’s Day, where they openly rejected the plan.
Two of the vendors told Sunday Tribune that all the 3000 vendors hired for the project in the entire 33 local government areas had resolved to abandon the project until the old arrangement subsisted.
They were curious about the allocation of a mere N70 worth of meal per child, which they had managed to sustain despite the high prices of food items.
According to Olowofela, aggregators were involved to ensure that every N70 meal has N20 protein component.
“We won’t intentionally fail to feed our pupils but some vendors have BVN issues which are being resolved,” Olowofela said.
