ISHMAEL F. MENKOR
Africa-Press – Liberia. The Resident Coordinator of the United Nations (UN) in Liberia, Christine Umuyoni, has urged school authorities in Nimba to feed pupils with locally produced food.
Speaking at a meeting with the Nimba County School Authority, including the County Education Officer and other education officers, the Ministry of Agriculture local staff, and the World Food Program’s (WFP) Country Director Dr. Alieu Diongue in Ganta recently, Umuyoni said the locally produced food is very organic and easy to get.
WFP has been encouraging school authorities and parents to get involved in school gardening in order to complement WFP food ration distribution.
“Give our children our local food,” she said, explaining the importance of feeding the kids with locally produced food to the local government officials, representing various institutions partnering with WFP in food distribution in Nimba. “It is rich and organic and if the kids know the importance, they will also create interest in eating it.”
She added that when children are fed local foods, they begin to learn how to grow them, and the tendency to depend on imported food will begin to stop. She also encouraged the parents to take their children to their home village or town, something she said makes the children patriotic.
Nimba has about 178,900 students, according to County Education Officer Moses Dologbay. However, 16,319 students are said to be benefiting from the WFP feeding program, WFP has said.
In the past, WFP worked with some local non-governmental organizations that were charged with the responsibility of purchasing local produce and distributing it to schools. However, these partnerships appear to have been canceled, because last year WFP resumed distribution of clean rice and vegetable oil to schools in Nimba, with no local ingredients attached.
Last year, there was some controversy surrounding the World Food Program food distribution to public schools in Nimba. There were complaints about many kids being left out of the food distribution, despite their names being logged on the ration tickets.
The WFP Food distribution was done under a project titled, ‘Take Home Ration’, where each student was entitled to a 40kg bag of clean Chinese rice, according to WFP.
Amidst the complaints of sidelining students, the Liberia National Police in Ganta, on July 3, intercepted a 12-wheeler truck carrying 600 bags of the same distributed China grant rice from Zwedru to Monrovia, allegedly with two waybills.
Morris Konneh, the driver of truck, bearing the plate number ‘H-0751’, told the Daily Observer that the food was heading for Maryland County but, because of the bad road between Zwedru and Fishtown in River Gee, they decided to return back to Monrovia so as to transport the food by sea, either on boat, something the WFP Communication Director Venette Tolbert also confirmed.
But, the Security Officer of WFP, Sando Garner Johnson, gave different opinions, arguing that the food was not heading for Maryland as claimed, but said the WFP decided to relocate some of the rice back to Monrovia for distribution to other schools in Montserrado County.
However, it is not clear what prompted this recent visit by UN bodies to Nimba, especially when the school year is coming to an end, something neither the WFP country director nor the UN Resident Coordinator was willing to speak about with the press, after the meeting came to an end.
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