School feeding fees to go up

Middle
23-07-08

THE Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) has proposed an increase in the feeding fee under the programme from 30Gp per child per day to 40Gp.
The move is to meet the increasing cost of food.
The National Co-ordinator of the GSFP, Mr Michael Nsowah, who announced this at the meet-the-press series in Accra yesterday, said a memorandum for approval had already been sent to Cabinet.
He expressed the hope that the amount would be approved, saying that the secretariat had already begun working with the 40Gp per child.
He noted that the programme, which was introduced in 2005, had led to an increase in school enrolment by 17.5 per cent and improved school attendance by 19.3 per cent, compared with 3.2 per cent in schools that were not benefiting from the programme.
Mr Nsowah said a baseline study which had been designed to support effective programme management on a consistent basis enabled routine programme monitoring and evaluation, stating that the initial steps taken included the formation of a technical group of the collaborating ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) which, as part of their normal routine, collected data that would be of relevance as baseline data for the GSFP.
He said the total programme budget for the planned five-year period was estimated at $328 million, comprising a capital expenditure of $15 million, operating expenditure of $287 million and other expenditure of $26 million.
The GSFP, he said, emphasised locally-grown foodstuffs, with a target to procure at least 80 per cent of the food from the localities in which the schools benefitting from the programme were sited.
Mr Nsowah indicated that the ready market for local foods would encourage food crop farmers to produce more and reduce post-harvest losses to improve national food security.
“This will impact postively on farm household incomes in the participating communities. Indeed, it is targeted that 80 per cent of the feeding cost for the programme will go into the local economy. There is also the impact of school feeding on the private sector, which includes, among others, the supply of kitchen inputs and ancilliary equipment, as well as employment opportunities in the preparation and serving of school meals,” he said.
He announced that people who tended to thwart the efforts of the programme would be excluded from it.
The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mr Stephen Asamoah-Boateng, said the programme was part of the government’s social protection strategies to mitigate the challenges facing people in vulnerable communities.
He said although the government was limited by resources, thereby limiting the implementation of the programme in some selected schools, with the discovery of oil, it would be expanded to cover all basic schools.
The Netherlands government supports the GSFP by co-funding the feeding cost on a 50:50 basis.