By Faith Igbudu
Cooks in Benue state, under the Home Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSFP), have been charged to observe proper hygiene practices to avoid food contamination or food poisoning while cooking for the benefitting children.
The charge was given as the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development ((FMHADMSD) with support from the Benue state government held a one-day training for cooks in the state.
The training tagged; ‘Nationwide Documentation and Training of Cooks on the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme’ across the country is said to be held in all 36 states of the federation.
Team Leader for the training in Benue state, Ahaji Gambo Lawal, while declaring the training open said the programme is aimed at boosting the capacity of the cooks, who make direct contact with the food and pupils, for better service delivery.
He stressed that the programme is expected to boost the enrollment of students into schools and not generate a health problem for the nation.
“The main essence of conducting this ‘Training of Trainers’ for the National HGSFP was derived from the reports gotten by Monitoring and Evaluation team of FMHADMSD across the federation in December 2021.
“It was observed that the cooks lack basic knowledge about hygiene as utensils were used indiscriminately for bathing and kitchen purposes. This will give them a guide on what is expected of them. So, chiefly, it is to prevent food poisoning among pupils.
“In addition, we are also looking at food standisation across the federation. If the standard is one milli liter for a child in Benue, it should be same in another state too, the ingredients should be the same, such that meals are standardized.
“The training is also targeted towards regulating the operational cost of the cooks which includes buying of condiments and payment of staff.
“We hope to create unison amongst the cooks to enable them form cooperatives that will be a channel to save the little monies they get so that after a period of time, they will maximize their job,” he said.
In his address, State Focal Person, Dr Terris Damsa, admonished cooks to give adequate attention to what they are being taught so they can cascade it to others. He urged them not to take lightly the fact that they have been chosen as trainers.
Represented by the Programme Manager, School Feeding Programme, Benue state, Tersoo Agera, he said “this is a wonderful step taken by the federal and state government to make sure that the skills of those saddled with the responsibility of cooking under this programme is enhanced.
“For a long time now, this cooks have not being given refresher trainings on the basics involved in the kitchen. It is good that they be kept abreast with the present trends of hygiene in the kitchen.”
He explained that “out of the 6,512 cooks in the state, 46 are being trained today. The idea is to train two master trainers in each of the 23 local government areas of the state. They will go back and train 20 each, that is 40 per local government, those ones will step down the training for others until all the cooks in the state are trained.
He noted that the logistics to gather all the cooks together will be huge saying the training is being delivered in such a way that each person will be equipped to be able to train others.
Some beneficiaries of the ‘Train the Trainer programme, Sandra Avungu from Buruku Local Government admitted to have gained a lot from the training basically in the area of simple kitchen hygiene methods sometimes ignored, while Franca Iortyer from Makurdi Local Government assured that her colleagues will certainly get a step down of what is being expected of them as cooks.