Nigerian govt set to train, employ 150,000 local cooks [Details]

The Federal Government is to train 150, 000 local cooks nationwide.

The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Farouq made this known at the Orientation Programme of Facilitators for the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP).

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that the programme, convened by the National Social Investments Programme (NSIP), under the NHGSFP in the Ministry of Humanitarian, is to train local cooks nationwide to meet the required standards of the school feeding initiative.

Farouq represented by Dr Umar Bindir, National Coordinator of NSIP, explained that the initiative would concentrate on the institutionalisation and the full implementation of the national home school feeding programme.

“This programme concentrates on the institutionalisation and the full implementation of the national home school programme, which is one of the prime clusters of the National Social Investment Programme.

”We started this programme in 2016 and we are feeding nearly 10 million children nationwide in all the states of the federation.

“This feeding process includes first, empowering women within the communities where the schools are located to cook the food for the children.

“This is a nationwide strategy, we are going to train cooks in the country and we have 100 to 150, 000 of them, ” the minister said.

According to her, the training is imperative to ensure that the cooks are well trained in their behaviour, physical appearance, their cooking methodologies, among others.

“The training will focus on the food safety, hygienic working environment, food procurement, food standardisation as well as financial literacy, ” she said.