Education, Youth and Information Minister Ruel Reid is urging the private sector to support expansion of the School Feeding Programme for students under the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH).

Senator Reid pointed out that the Government covers the programme for only three days and is only able to allocate $90 per day for each of the more than 200,000 students on PATH.

“The kids need to have lunch for five days and some of them even come to school without breakfast. We have to find a way to get lunch for the other two days. We can’t have our children going to school hungry. We need to find a solution,” Reid emphasised.

Meanwhile, the senator appealed to parents to be more responsible in planning their families. “We must ensure that we do not have children we cannot take care of. Fathers must not father children and leave them on the mothers. We need to plan for our children, we need to protect our children,” he said.

The minister was speaking at the handover of a photovoltaic system at the Jamaica National Children’s Home in Mona last Thursday. The system was installed under a three-year partnership with the National Tools and Engineering Institute of the HEART Trust/NTA and St Lawrence College in Ontario, Canada.

One of the objectives of the project is to develop skills in the field of renewable energy and efficiency. As such, students and faculty members of both training institutions were essential to the installation of the 16.3-kilowatt system.

The system seeks to offset power consumption and should result in a 30 per cent reduction in the monthly electricity bill over the next 20 years.