The Chairman of the Publicity and Sensitization Committee of Education Development Trust Fund, Bayelsa State, Fidelis Agbiki, has disclosed that the board has achieved a lot in the last four years.
He said that the board has achieved much in the area of school feeding, water projects, training, and provision of scholarship portals among others.
Speaking on Thursday in Yenagoa when the committee paid a thank you visit to Federated Correspondents’ Chapel of Nigeria Union of Journalists Bayelsa State, he stated that the primary responsibility of the board was to ensure the overall educational developments, intervening in critical areas adding that the board operates with a law that has been passed by the state house of Assembly.
Agbiki maintained that the board succeeded because the board comprises of those who are technocrats adding that “we cannot afford to do anything to stain the reputation we have built over time.
The executive secretary of the board Dr Alice Atuwo, said is the one in charge of funding stating” When you have people like us in this board you can see that everybody is doing his best to ensure integrity. That is what has sustained us.
He disclosed that the board’s funding comes from various sources, government and civil servants that contribute a bit which is ploughed back judiciously.
He said:” We cannot say we have achieved one hundred in everything but we tried our best. We are an interventionist agency a parastatal of the ministry of Education. They are our supervisor.
“They do the structural things and we only intervene. All those buildings of schools are not part of our assignment we just intervene in some situations to salvage the situation.
“We have enough personnel to be able to work. We have a very symbiotic relationship with the Ministry of Education but we don’t cross borders.
He asked for more funding to work as their tenure expires in three months.
“We are asking for more money to be invested into the board and allow us to spread to more areas. We are ok doing what we are doing but to improve, we need more money to be able to spread to more primary schools.
We need enough funds to be able to expand and to allow us flexibility in collaboration with the Ministry of Education because we can’t do it alone and can’t pretend to be an alternative ministry.
“We are principally feeding the students in boarding schools. That is a priority for us. About thirteen of them with the new set of technical schools that the government is bringing.
“We don’t have any government interference. We work in synergy and we have done very well in that and we have been able to do that because we have been courageous to some extent.
On the challenges confronting the board, he said “We also have some students that are coming from homes like in St Jude. Being able to know the disparity is one of our challenges but we are working on it. There is a committee that is working on that.
On feeding and some complaints, he said “We as ETDF don’t award contracts, we only provide the resources to the Ministry of Education. We only provide funds to the contractors that handle feeding. The contractors handling the feeding we don’t know but the monitoring unit goes monthly to monitor what the children are being fed with.”
Also speaking, John Angase, a member of the committee, said ETDF don’t feed adding all monies pass through the Ministry of Education before it gets to the board.
On the quality and quantity of food served to the boarders Angase, pleaded with parents to make some provisions for the children at home like Garri and Sugar before coming.
He disclosed that some parents don’t even give underwear to their children adding “They believe government should provide everything.”
He also advised the contractors serving in the kitchen to stop pilfering.
Earlier Samuel Ese, Vice Chairman of the Chapel who represented the chairman Tife Owolabi thanked them for coming back to say thank you.
He commended the committee and promised that the chapel would support the committee with publicity.
