Poor immigrant children hard to access to School Milk Project

Poor immigrant children who really need to drink milk are hard to access to the School Milk Project in Ho Chi Minh City as they are not permanent residents of the city, said Head of the Culture and Society Board under the HCMC People's Council Tang Huu Phong.
Poor immigrant children hard to access to School Milk Project
He has made the statement at a meeting between the Culture and Society Board and administrators in districts. The Board organized supervision of implementation of the city People’s Committee’s resolution 14/2019 on the School Milk Project in the period 2018-2020 from June 16 to 19.
Mr. Phong noted district authorities that children from poor and near-poor families are those who need to drink milk. However, because immigrant children are not permanent residents, they are not listed as beneficial of the project.
He proposed if not many immigrant children live in a district, district leaders should direct unions and enterprises relating to the project to give milk to these children and the city authorities will have better policies for this.
People’s Committee in District 9 said that the district has divided the project into two phases.
The first phase from November, 2019 to January, 2020 was deployed in 118 educational facilities benefiting 10,500 children. Nearly 8,700 children in 99 schools enjoyed one box of sterilized fresh milk that meets the standards of the Ministry of Health in the second phase from May 25 till now .
The district realized difficulties including parents of children in private schools neglecting the project.
The School Milk Project jointly funded by the Government, parents and milk supplier Vietnam Daily Products Joint Stock Company (Vinamilk) is the largest project in terms of scale and value at schools. The city state budget supported 30 percent of total expenditure while Vinamilk 20 percent and parents contributed 50 percent. Kindergarten children and first graders of low-income families or those in social sponsoring houses will get free milk.
Of around 9,000 first-grade children in Thu Duc District, parents of more than 5,000 kids registered to take part in the project while of more than 22,000 preschoolers, over 7,000 drink milk at schools. Children refused to drink milk at schools because the milk taste is bad and children are fed up with school milk.
Plus, some parents can’t afford charges of milk. Nearly 60 percent of population in Thu Duc District are immigrants whose children did not get access to school because they are not permanent residents of the city.
The delegation of the Culture and Society Board hailed some good way in implementing the project of district administrators. According to the delegation, the project is humane; therefore, the city will continuously implement it while school should make parents who refuse to take part in the project understand the benefit of drinking milk.
The project aims to improve the nutritional status of preschool and primary children through daily milk-feeding, reducing the rate of malnutrition, raising the stature and physical strength of Vietnamese children; therefore, contributing to the development of human resources in the future.

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