MINISTRY : AGRICULTURE AND FOOD SECURITY
DEPARTMENT : NUTRITION AND HOME ECONOMICS
DIVISION : NUTRITION SERVICES
SECTION : COMMUNITY NUTRITION
TITLE : ASSISTANT NUTRITION MANAGER (Community Nutrition)
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; NUTRITION EDUCATION AND INFORMATION; NUTRITIONAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT; COMBARTING OF NUTRITIONAL RELATED DISEASES; COORDINATION AND COLLABARATION OF SECTIONAL ACTIVITIES; 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 and nutrition programmes and activities
- Conducts training workshops for Nutrition and Home Economics officers to enable them to train the community on community nutrition
- Establishes control measures to ensure that utilization of set guidelines and procedures on food preparations and 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. NUTRITION EDUCATION AND 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 nutrition related issues to facilitate the empowerment of District Nutrition Officers for productivity enhancement.
- 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 good nutrition in the community.
3. NUTRITIONAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
- Conducts base line surveys on nutrition where deemed necessary in order to
facilitate accurate interventions
- Conducts research studies to find nutritional trends throughout the life cycle in the country in order to establish relevant measures to be taken to enhance nutritional status.
- Conducts nutritional assessment on locally available and affordable resources to ensure food security.
- Conduct 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 as well as extend to which they warrant some review and improvements.
- Collaborate with research institutions in the field of human nutrition locally and internationally to design and develop relevant and appropriate food and nutrition guidelines for consumers in the different conditions.
4. COMBARTING OF NUTRITIONAL RELATED DISEASES
4.1. Conducts surveys and research studies on malnutrition related diseases in Lesotho in order to recommend and promote appropriate preventive nutritional measures.
4.2. Participates and recommends in the development of rules and regulations on nutrition to control entry of food that are not recommended for consumption.
4.3. Participates and recommends in the designing and development of guidelines and strategies on over nutrition and under nutrition in order to eliminate life style related diseases.
4.4. Ensures maternal and child nutrition.
- COORDINATION OF
SECTIONAL ACTIVITIES
- Draws and prepares the sectional annual work plan and report to ensure the smooth running of the divisional operations
- 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.
- Participates in related meetings, seminars and conferences both locally and internationally for information sharing.
- 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.
- PREPARATION OF THE SECTIONAL BUDGET
- Prepares the overall sectional 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.
COMPENSABLE FACTORS
- JOB SPECIFICATION
Bsc in Food Science and Technology/Community Nutrition/ Consumer Science/Nutrition
- Experience
Two (2) years working experience in a related field