According to Africa Education Watch, a think tank on education, a 200 percent increase in the cost of the school feeding programme is necessary to provide participants with nutritious food.
The think tank claims that this is in reaction to continued calls for an increase in the price of meals and the payment of arrears due caterers under the programme.
The intervention to improve the quality of food served to students will close a GH3 billion shortfall as a result of the percentage increase.
According to Kofi Asare, Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, in order to prevent the policy from failing, the government must implement the automatic adjustment method of financing it.
“What the caterers need is not a 10 percent adjustment in the unit cost of feeding. It wouldn’t do anything. At least a 200 percent increase in the feeding budget is GH¢3 billion and that is required to provide decent food for children in basic schools to be consistent with what government is paying for in providing lunch at the SHS level.”
Some caterers under the government’s school feeding programme have withdrawn their services after school resumed on Tuesday, April 4.
The decision to withdraw their services comes after the caterers threatened to lay down their tools following the government’s failure to pay arrears owed them.
The caterers who are also demanding an increment in the amount government pays per child daily from GHp 97 to GH¢3 say the current amount is unsustainable because of the current state of the economy and its accompanying high cost of food commodities.
In some public basic schools, Citi News visited within Kumasi, headteachers confirmed that they are not expecting to receive food for the pupils under the government’s school feeding program on Tuesday as the caterers have informed them that they are not cooking.
“The Minster of Finance must review the framework and ensure that expenditure allocation and projection for the Ghana school feeding program is consistent with the exigencies of the time in terms of the nutritional needs of the students, inflationary trends”, Kofi Asare added.
