The Department of Education’s School-Based Feeding Program will get a budget of P5.97 billion next year, P1 billion or 20 percent higher than this year’s P4.97 billion, Anakalusugan party-list Rep. Michael Defensor said on Sunday.
“We are all for the bigger allocation so that the program can target and cover a greater number of underfed school children,” he said.
Under the SBFP, undernourished children from kindergarten to Grade 6 are given deworming tablets and fed at least one fortified meal with doses of micronutrients in the form of pills, capsules or syrups, for at least 120 days in a school year.
“There’s no question the program has helped improve the nutritional and overall health condition of children, apart from encouraging more of them to stay in school,” Defensor said.
The SBFP targets mostly “wasted and severely wasted” school children, or those deemed undernourished for their age.
“Right now, many school children from poverty-stricken families, even here in Metro Manila, continue to suffer from short-term hunger,” Defensor said.
In its second-quarter survey, the Social Weather Stations found 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 the Masustansyang Pagkain Para sa Batang Pilipino Act which President Rodrigo Duterte signed into law in June last year.
The two others are the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s Supplemental Feeding Program for Children in Public Day Care Centers and the Department of Agriculture’s Milk Feeding Program.