Sakaja: Why some schools have not received Dishi na County meals

Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja has explained why some schools in Nairobi have not yet received Dishi na County meals.

In a statement on Monday, Sakaja said the schools fall under different phases.

Sakaja added that the first phase of schools onboarded were getting their hot meals daily and on time.

"The County has endeavoured to communicate directly with the schools through the Ministry of Education's regional office," Sakaja said.

"Each of the headteachers was made aware of which phase each of their schools fall and was urged to sustain their existing feeding programmes until there is clear communication from the county on the commencement of 'Dishi na County' in their schools."

He said the county has continued to onboard children in the remaining public schools through a registration process for the next phase.

He assured parents who had already loaded money onto the 'Tap to Eat' platform would be expensed when the children were provided with food.

He said the second stage will reach more than 190,000 children a day, and the final stage to commence subsequently reaching the targeted 250,000 children goal.

This was after a section of Kenyans raised concerns over the feeding program claiming that some schools went without food on Monday.

Earlier, a social media user posted a video claiming that pupils in Tumaini Primary School had not received their lunch.

She alleged that the children came to school without their lunch expecting to be fed under the Dishi na County program.

However, Sakaja shared a video of Tumaini headteacher Millicent Kefa disputing the allegations.

She said that the video had nothing to do with the Tumaini Primary School.

"We are sorry for the video that has gone viral, we are going on with our program for now until the Dishi na County is rolled out, we are waiting for it and we are happy that the governor is planning to feed our children," she said.

Sakaja urged Kenyans not to politicise the school feeding programme saying it is propaganda.

"Sadly, opportunistic premature 2027 aspirants, are so hellbent that this shouldn’t work that they are even considering harming our children," he said.

Dishi na County began on August 28 2023, an initiative of Nairobi City to distribute subsidized, nutritionally balanced, hot meals every school day for all children in public primary schools and public ECD centres.

The balanced meals are available for Sh5 to parents.

He added that for the past 3 weeks, the county has been feeding about 80,000 students in 45 primary and ECDE schools in Nairobi - as part of the first stage of implementation.