Education think tank, Africa Education Watch, has stated that a 200 percent increase in the cost of the school feeding programme is required to provide excellent food to beneficiaries.
According to the think tank, this is in reaction to the initiative’s continued demand for a rise in the cost of food and the payment of arrears due to caterers.
With the intervention to improve the quality of food provided to pupils, the percentage increase will close the GH3 billion difference.
Kofi Asare, Executive Director of Africa Education Watch told the media that the government must implement the automatic adjustment method of financing the programme to prevent it from collapsing.
“What the caterers require is not a 10% increase in the unit cost of feeding. It would have no effect. A 200 percent increase in the feeding budget is GH3 billion, which is required to provide adequate food for children in primary schools in order to be consistent with what the government pays for in providing lunch at the secondary level.”
Once school reopened on Tuesday, April 4, some caterers in the government’s school feeding programme withdrew their services.
The caterers’ decision to withdraw their services comes after they vowed to strike in response to the government’s failure to pay debts owed to them.
The caterers, who are also asking for an increase in the amount the government pays per child daily from GHp97 to GH3, claim that the current amount is unsustainable due to the situation of the economy and the high cost of food items.
Head teachers acknowledged to OilCity Radio that they do not anticipate getting food for their students under the government’s school feeding programme on Tuesday since the caterers have notified them that they are not cooking.
“The Finance Minister must evaluate the framework and ensure that expenditure allocation and projection for the Ghana school feeding programme are commensurate with the necessities of the time in terms of nutritional needs of pupils and inflationary trends,” Kofi Asare stated.
