Council for Health and Development (CHD) tagged DepEd’s noodle scam as “deceitful and scandalous” in a statement today.
CHD, a national consortium of more than 50 community-based health programs in the Philippines, scored the Department of Education’s recent distribution of 19,418,880 packs of instant noodles to more than 19 million public school children in the country.
In a statement, CHD Executive Director Eleanor A. Jara, M.D. said that “the millions of pesos spent by the government through DepEd to buy overpriced noodles for its so-called Food for the School program that aims to give proper nutrition to school children is an artificial and stop-gap measure to mask the problem behind a starving nation.
She further stated that many people question the true nutritional value of instant noodles including those that were distributed to public school children.
“Despite their companies’ aggressive marketing of instant noodles, the product is believed to contain far less nutrition than it actually claims. Natural food with high nutritional value remains to be the best source of proper nutrition. Sadly though, millions of Filipinos do not earn enough to buy adequate food,” she added.
Dr. Jara expressed that instead of nutrition, DepEd’s noodles gave those children and their families false hopes that the government is actually doing something for the children. She tagged the instant-noodle-program as “a deceitful and shameful show.”
“On hindsight, the more than P400 million spent to purchase a single measly meal will never give more than 19 million public school children brighter minds but will probably fatten the pockets of corrupt officials involved in the transaction,” she explained.
In their statement, CHD contends that if the government has sincere intentions of helping impoverished school children achieve better nutrition for better minds, it should look into the real circumstances that deprive these children of a balanced and healthful diet.
Moreover, they said that it is very likely that these children come from families who live on a hand-to-mouth existence and whose parents are jobless or underemployed. Hence, the only means to address undernourishment in schoolchildren is to provide their families jobs with livable income and access to basic social services.
Dr. Jara said that DepEd should rethink their feeding program. Instead of spending hundreds of millions for what appears now to be a shameful crime, it should focus on addressing the root causes of nutrition deficiency among public school children.
Lastly, CHD challenges this land’s lawmakers to seriously look into this scandalous project that is a threat to our children’s future.
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