MINISTRY : AGRICULTURE AND FOOD SECURITY
DEPARTMENT : NUTRITION AND HOME ECONOMICS
SECTION : FOOD SCIENCE & APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY
TITLE : ASSISTANT NUTRITION MANAGER (Food Science & Appropriate Technology)
GRADE : H
RESPONSIBLE TO : NUTRITION MANAGER
JOB SUMMARY
UNDER THE GENERAL SUPERVISION OF THE CHIEF NUTRITION OFFICER THE INCUMBENT WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR FORMULATION AND FACILITATION OF IMPLEMENTATION OF SECTIONAL POLICY; FOOD SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY INFORMATION; FOOD SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH; COORDINATION AND COLLABARATION OF SECTIONAL ACTIVITIES AND PREPARATION OF THE SECTIONAL BUDGET AND ASSUME PARTIAL OF FULL RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE CHIEF NUTRITION OFFICER IN HIS/HER ABSENTISM.
MAIN DUTIES
1. FORMULATION AND FACILITATION OF IMPLEMENTATION OF SECTIONAL POLICY
- Develops sectional policy to facilitate guidance in the overall implementation of sectional activities
- Develops simplified training manuals and guidelines to facilitate a common understanding and interpretation for easy implementation of food science and technology programmes and activities
- Conducts training workshops for Nutrition and Home Economics officers to enable them to train the community on food science and technology
- Establishes control measures to ensure that utilization of set guidelines and procedures on food handling is within the set standards, policies, rules and regulations.
- Monitors the performance of the sectional policy, rules and regulations as well as set guidelines on proper handling of food to facilitate their effectiveness, efficiency and responsiveness to community so as to promote food safety.
- Reviews and revises the sectional policy to ensure their responsiveness to the environmental and developmental needs.
- Monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of sectional programmes
2. FOOD SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY INFORMATION
- Develops and designs guidelines and
methodologies on data collection and community education for Nutrition and Home
Economics staff to ensure good quality information
- Develops and interprets simplified training manuals on nutritional issues, to facilitate a common understanding and adherence.
- Develops guidelines and manuals on food science and technology related issues to facilitate the empowerment of District Nutrition Officers for enhancement of food safety.
- Liaises with District Nutrition Officers to gather relevant information for the development of data bank to help ease implementation and accomplishment of sectional activities.
- Monitors and evaluates the performance of the developed guidelines and manuals to ensure that it is efficient and effective.
- Liaises with both local and international organizations so as to promote and upgrade food science and technology information.
- Updates data regularly to ensure that information in the data bank is in line with the changing environmental and developmental needs.
3. FOOD SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH
- Carries out research studies on food science
and technology to determine total food quality.
- Facilitate in the assessment of sensory evaluation throughout the country to assess food quality.
- Conducts surveys on the proper utilization and impact of the newly introduced and recommended products in Lesotho to ascertain the level of understanding of the consumers on their proper use.
- Collaborate with research institutions in the field of food science and technology locally and internationally to share information and keep abreast with new developments.
- Carries out experiments on externally developed food recipes to establish and determine their sustainability for local consumption and recommends accordingly
4. COORDINATION OF SECTIONAL ACTIVITIES
4.1 Draws and prepares the sectional annual work plan and report to ensure the smooth running of the divisional operations
4.2 Liaises with the local and international organizations to ensure and facilitate consistency and mutual support and synchronic implementation of sectional programmes as well as to avoid duplication of efforts and misuse of resources.
4.3 Participates in related meetings, seminars and conferences both locally and internationally for information sharing
4.4 Participates in meetings with other sectional heads in the planning and reporting of their sectional activities to facilitate mutual support in the implementation of divisional activities and programmes.
5. PREPARATION OF THE SECTIONAL BUDGET
- Prepares
the overall sectional budget annual budget annually to ensure that all
sectional programmes and projects are funded accordingly and implementation
smoothly.
- Negotiates and justifies the sectional budget at the divisional budget discussions in order to secure the necessary funds to finance sectional activities.
- Recommends the review of the sectional budget to the head of division whenever the need arises to realign it with changes in the sectional business plan to facilitate the implementation of the critical programmes and activities within the section.
6. MONITORING AND EVALUATION OF IMPLEMENTATION OF SECTIONAL PROGRAMMES
- Develops
monitoring system to ensure consistency
- Interprets the developed monitoring system to the District Nutrition Officers to ensure mutual understanding, support and adherence
- Hold meetings quarterly with relevant bodies to monitor the progress to ensure that they are in line with the planned activities
- ASSUME PARTIAL OF FULL RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE
CHIEF NUTRITION OFFICER IN HIS/HER ABSENTISM
- Holds regular meetings with nutrition staff to facilitate planning and reporting of the divisional activities.
- Convenes quarterly meetings with nutrition staff to review progress and accordingly approves the required and necessary revisions in their operational work plans so as to provide the required resources for their achievement.
- Identifies the training needs of the individual supervisees and establishes the strategies to guide on their training and development so as to promote their capacity, competence, efficiency and effectiveness and provide in service upgrading the knowledge.
- Monitors and evaluates the post training and development performance of the undertaken training and determines the necessary action to maintain good skills and upgrade as necessary.
JOB SPECIFICATION
- BSc in Food Science and Technology/Community Nutrition/ Consumer Science/Nutrition
EXPERIENCE
- Two (2) years working experience in a related field