Senate to repackage DepEd’s P4-B feeding program

The Senate would be pushing for a change in the composition of the Department of Education’s (DepEd) P4 billion school feeding program from rice to milk and noodles.

Senate committee on finance chairman Franklin Drilon and Sen. Edgardo Angara expressed their belief that the use of rice for the school feeding program would not benefit the children, who are the intended beneficiaries.

After hearing the proposed budget of the DepEd for 2007, Drilon noted that out of the P4 billion allocated for school feeding program, P3.9 billion would be for the purchase of rice.

Drilon pointed out that the DepEd’s program has become more geared towards poverty alleviation than on addressing malnutrition among school children.

He said that the children would just bring home the rice and there is no guarantee that they would get the benefits from the program.

"This is not addressing the malnutrition of our children. The problem is malnutrition. The DepEd should address the malnutrition and leave the poverty alleviation to the other sectors of our bureaucracy," Drilon said.

"They say this is for poverty alleviation. We do not debate on that, this is poverty alleviation but the concept is to address the malnutrition problem. Therefore, what we should have is not rice but noodles, milk and other nutritious food. But not rice because that will not address the malnutrition," he added.

Both Drilon and Angara expressed concern that the program of the DepEd would just benefit the rice farmers of countries such as Thailand and Vietnam where the National Food Authority is importing its rice.

"Apart from the farmers of Thailand and Vietnam, where the rice would be imported, there is also the commission of the NFA where the traders are also making money. All of this would indicate that we should have a nutrition program properly implemented by prohibiting rice as the preferred mode of executing the school feeding program because that is not malnutrition alleviation," he said.

Angara said that he believes there is a hidden agenda behind the choice of rice for the school feeding program.

"It is possible that they would just use the funds to import more than a million tons of rice. We are sacrificing our own farmers from Aurora, Quezon, Isabela and other regions just for benefit of some people in government who are getting kickbacks," Angara said.

Drilon said that the P4 billion for the school feeding program would be retained in the DepEd’s budget but there would be a provision specifying that it would be for milk, noodles and similar nutrients rather than rice.

In 2005, the DepEd allocated P60 million for the school feeding program then increased this to P2.5 billion in 2006 and now to P4 billion for 2007.