Bigger Budget for Feeding Program

School-Based Feeding Program (SBFP) of the Department of Education (DepEd) will get a bigger budget by the year 2020.

ANAKalusugan Partylist Representative Michael Defensor said that the budget will increase to P5.97 billion in 2020, P1 billion or 20 percent higher than this year’s P4.97 billion budget.

“We are all for the bigger allocation, so that the program can target and cover a greater number of underfed school children,” Defensor said.

Defensor explained that under the SBFP, children from kindergarten to Grade 6 who are considered to be undernourished will be given deworming tablets and fed at least one fortified meal plus doses of micro nutrients
in the form of pills, capsules or syrups, for at least 120 days in a school year.

Defensor also said that SBFP would help ease starvation among school children from indigent households.

In its second-quarter survey conducted in late June 2019, the Social Weather Stations found that an estimated 2.5 million Filipino families experienced either “moderate” or “severe” involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months.

The SBFP is one of the three national feeding programs for undernourished children institutionalized by Republic Act No. 11037, or the Masustansyang Pagkain Para sa Batang Pilipino Act, which President Rodrigo Duterte signed into law in June 2018.

Meanwhile, National Nutrition Council Central Visayas (NNC)-7 Regional Director Parolita Mission expressed her gratitude on the said budget increase.

“This is good news to improve the nutritional status of pre school and school children,” Mission said. (MLC)