Mr. Turay was speaking at the recent weekly press briefing held in the conference room of the Ministry of Information and Communication, Youyi Building, Freetown.
As the Free and Quality Education programme starts on September 17th Mr. Turay also revealed that the Ministry of Finance has allocated forty three billion Leones as school fees to all government and government assisted schools across the country.
He made this disclosure while updating the press about the preparedness of the Education Ministry in rolling out the free and quality education package across the country.
He explained that with the amount allocated, they have only disbursed twenty nine billion Leones to schools across the country, stating that they will have to approve more teachers and schools once they meet the requirements with the fourteen billion Leones that is left.
He said the previous government was paying sixty six Leones (Le66) for every child for the school feeding programme, but that the new administration of President Bio increased that to Le2,000 per child. He added that cooking would be five times a week.
He maintained that they have already contacted development partners including WFP, CRS and Joint Aim Management (JAM) which is a South African company that is specialized in food production. He said, “We have already allocated land to JAM at Yeli where they will be cultivating their own crops.”
He maintained that this is the first time in the history of Sierra Leone where a political administration has declared free and quality education, with the highest budget allocation of 21% to the education sector.
