About 1,127 food vendors have been appointed in Enugu state for the Home Grown School Feeding programme of the Buhari administration.
Commissioner for Education, Prof. Uche Eze, said on Tuesday that more food vendors would have qualified for the programme but for technical hitches encountered during the verification.
He stated that the inter-ministerial committee set up by the state government had worked tirelessly to ensure the state government met the prerequisite conditions necessary to participate in the scheme.
“We have, through the help of the governor, recruited food vendors that will prepare the meals to be served to the school children and opened accounts for them.
“What we are now doing is to match their Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) with their bank accounts and those that have been matched are now ready to start supplying,” he stated.
Eze stated that the process of matching the BVNs with the bank account numbers was not without its hitches as some of the food vendors supplied wrong information.
“We had a little challenge in that area because some people supplied the wrong BVNs and their names could not be matched with the account numbers they gave.
“Some of them do not know what it means to have their personal BVNs. So they collected those of their relations but it did not tally with the accounts we opened for them,” he stated.
The commissioner stated that the committee was trying to resolve those lapses, with a view to starting the programme in the state.
“We have put every other necessary logistic in place and very soon, the scheme will start in our state,” Eze added.