Kogi begins recruitment of 3,000 caterers for school feeding programme

Kogi Government on Thursday began the recruitment of three thousand caterers to handle the Home Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSFP) across the 21 local government areas of the state.

Mrs Kadijat Karibo, the Unit Head of HGSFP in Kogi, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) at the venue of the exercise in Lokoja, that feeding of the pupils would start in October.

She said that the state, in collaboration with the Federal Government, has put necessary things in place to employ indigenous caterers that would handle the cooking across the state.

Karibo said that local small scale farmers would supply the raw food needed for the feeding programme to reduce unemployment rate in the state.

“We are recruiting caterers that will take care of our children in the public schools from primary one to three.

“We have designed and printed out forms that were sent to all the local governments. These forms were filled and returned by interested caterers.

“We profiled everything and shortlisted the qualified candidates; today, we are doing oral interview for candidates from three local governments (Lokoja, Koton-Karfe and Ajaokuta).

“We sincerely appreciate Gov. Yahaya Bello for his support and commitment to the actualisation of the school feeding programme.

“We also commend the Federal Government for fulfilling its campaign promises in the area of social intervention programmes,” Karibo said.

In his remarks, Mr Femi Bolaji, the Head, Unit of N-Power in Kogi, lauded the state government for the structures and fund made available for the recruitment to ensure success of the programme.

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Bolaji said that the recruitment which started on Wednesday had been hitch-free.

He said that some of the caterers who could not speak English were communicated to in their indigenous languages.

“We thank the governor for backing up all the programmes with the state’s counterpart funding to support our operations; it even provided a furnished and digitalised staff office,” Bolaji said.

One of the applicants, Miss Aminat Mohammed from Koton-Karfe, told NAN that the process of the interview was fair to all, and commended the state government for the gesture.