When Mahendra Phagwah announced his resignation as coordinator of the National Breakfast Programme one remark stood out. He noted that even with the allocation having increased from $200 to $280 per child, providing a highly nutritious breakfast remains challenging.
If that doesn’t send thinking minds into a frenzy, then what will?
With the ever-climbing cost of living in Guyana it boggles the mind as to how $280 can provide a nutritious breakfast for a school-aged child. The cost for basic food items like eggs, vegetables and other items have skyrocketed in recent times.
So, while Mr. Phagwah may have earned three degrees while being employed full-time in a five-year period he might want to share his arithmetic on the stretching of that $280 per meal for a child.
No doubt many housewives will be waiting with bated breath for this information. And it was less in 2022 as back then it was $200 per child and the breakfast included a juice as well.
The Ministry of Education last year had acknowledged that there was a challenge with the programme saying it was conducting a full review to ensure that the nutritional needs of learners are met and that this initiative continues to have an even more profound impact on the lives of schoolchildren and their families all across the country.
“Assuming office in September, I had a sit down with the School Feeding Unit to ascertain the daily operations of the programme and how we can improve it to create the impact that we want,” Minister of Education Sonia Parag had said at the time.
It is unclear as to what came out of that review but now the coordinator is gone and in his words he has resigned “as I move up the ladder into a new role in the international development sphere where I will continue to serve and contribute to national development in a greater capacity”.
According to the former coordinator’s account the programme grew from a pilot initiative in a handful of schools to one serving approximately 53,000 children each school day. And on the bright side of things has also created employment for hundreds of caterers, many of them women. It is also believed that the programme improved the attendance of learners and helped them to concentrate on their studies.
There is little dispute that the underlying objective is sound. For decades, Guyana has experimented with various school feeding initiatives based on the recognition that hunger and learning are poor companions. As far back as 2016, when a breakfast pilot was launched on the East Coast, the Ministry of Education acknowledged that inadequate nutrition was a contributor to poor academic performance and that any expansion of school feeding should be guided by considerations of nutritional adequacy and cost.
Mr Phagwah late last year had to defend the programme and deny that there were disparities.
“The verification records and field logs of the National School Feeding Programme do not reflect widespread disparities as claimed,” Phagwah had said in an October 10th, 2025 letter in response to an earlier letter containing this accusation.
That letter writer had said that there was “an urgent need for standardisation and oversight in this programme. It is unacceptable that a multimillion-dollar taxpayer-funded initiative is being executed without a standardized menu, defined portion sizes, and clear inspection mechanisms across all schools.”
According to that letter, children at some schools were receiving adequate portions of protein and carbohydrates while some children were given nothing more than “a half of a jam cake, dry cereal in a bowl, or even unhealthy hotdogs that students themselves reject. Shockingly, some schools rarely ever receive protein except during the Grade 6 National Exams… Even more troubling, reports exist of suppliers providing fruits that were found to be rotten and worm-infested—posing direct health risks to students. Parents and students have been left dissatisfied, and illnesses are not uncommon after consuming such poorly handled meals.”
In response Mr Phagwah had said that the suggestion that schools along the East Coast were experiencing wide disparities in meals “creates an impression that every one of the 31 schools has been inspected and found wanting. This is not a conclusion that is supported by the facts.”
Mr Phagwah’s letter added that “While unfortunate incidents may have occurred at one or two schools, it is both inaccurate and unfair to generalise these isolated experiences across the entire corridor. The verification records and field logs maintained by the programme do not reflect widespread disparities as claimed.”
“At a scale of over 51,000 meals daily, challenges will arise, but the mechanisms are there to identify and address them quickly,” he boasted.
From all of the above, it needs to be examined whether the programme is adequately funded to achieve its stated nutritional goals.
The government has repeatedly described the breakfasts as nutritious. Programme officials have noted that menus are developed with guidance from nutritionists and the Carnegie School of Home Economics and adapted to local circumstances. Yet nutritional adequacy should not be assumed merely because a meal is provided. It must be demonstrated.
The resignation of its coordinator should therefore not simply trigger tributes for a programme that has undoubtedly expanded rapidly. It should also prompt a serious policy discussion about its future.
If $280 per child is sufficient to provide a balanced, nutritious breakfast, the evidence should be made public. If it is not, then government must confront the reality that the budget needs to be adjusted.
The success of a school feeding programme should ultimately be measured not by the number of meals distributed, but by whether the children receiving them are genuinely better nourished. That is the standard against which the National Breakfast Programme ought to be judged and how it measures that standard is for the government to decide.
Discussion