Let's go vegan - Victoria Hammah's 'unorthodox' solution to problems with School Feeding program

Former Deputy Communications Minister Victoria Hamah has tabled what she considers to be a solution to the perennial challenges facing the Feeding Program. According to her, the initiative can be sustainable if it goes the government and relevant authorities adopt vegetarianism as the nutrition model for the beneficiaries. In a Facebook post, she said “the School Feeding Program can be "Sustainable" if we go Vegan. We don't need to eat animals to get Protein.” The School Feeding program has been fraught with challenges with constant threats from caterers who claim to be owed by government. In August this year, the Northern Region branch of the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) threatened to close down Senior High Schools (SHSs) for non-payment of monies for perishables. “Apart from arrears owed us in respect of perishable for the first semester of 2021/2022 academic year, no money has been paid for the eleven weeks of the second semester we have done so far, this makes going to the market very difficult.” “Suppliers who give us credit for perishable items like eggs and meat are not ready to continue with the supply owing to the amounts of indebtedness,” the statement indicated. According to them, Heads of Schools in the Region would be compelled to send the SHS 2 students who are in their second semester home. “On the foregoing, we wish to state that if we do not get immediate releases the SHS 1 students of the single truck schools who would be due to return to school tomorrow Tuesday, August 16, 2022, would not report until we get money. This also includes those in transitional schools who are also billed to report on September 4 2022. NYA/