Public and government-aided schools have expressed their difficulties in implementing the school feeding programme to all students.

The school feeding programme was extended to pre-primary, primary, and secondary school children at the beginning of this academic year. Under the arrangement, the government allocated over Rwf27 billion to support the programme in the current fiscal year.

Currently, government spends Rwf56 every day in addition to the Rwf150 compulsory contribution of the parent as support to each student’s feeding while at school.

However, public schools and government-aided schools say that they are increasingly finding it hard to raise enough funds to sustain the programme.

Liberate Nyirawera, the Headmistress of Buremera Primary School in Huye District, said that the current stock of food they have will not be able to feed the children for the entire term because they only received half of the funding.

She added that if they do not receive extra funding they will not be able to feed the schoolchildren in two weeks.

Jean Damascène Niyitegeka, Headteacher at Groupe Scolaire Kigarama in Ngoma District, said that the challenge they face is that they receive little money for the school programme.

"The money we received from the government was for pre-primary and lower primary, yet we have to feed the whole school of more than a thousand students because we cannot feed some and leave others hungry,

"And parents struggle to make their contributions…they are the biggest contributors and this slows down the whole programme implementation,” he said.

Eugene Twambazimana, a father of three children, attributes the lack of support from parents to their financial constraints.

"I have to contribute Rwf12,000 per term for each of my children, and as a parent, I cannot raise Rwf36,000 every term for my children to be able to eat at school, in addition to paying school fees and other scholastic materials which constraints me financially,” he said.

Verediane Uwinana, a Teacher at Ruhunga Primary School, said that her school had stopped feeding due to insufficient funding from both parents and government and they even had to get some loans in order to be able to keep feeding the children longer.

"The government money we get is to buy food only, but we have to buy firewood, pay the workers and we had to buy utensils which were actually not enough...we have no option but to wait for the next funding from the government to resume the programme,”

"Another issue is the prices of food hiking and you find that the money we budgeted for is not enough by the time we go to purchase the food,” she said.

The Ministry of Education was not able to comment on the issue.