Public Relations Officer of the Ministry of Education, Kwasi Kwarteng, has disclosed that the ministry has resolved food supply challenges within the various senior high schools in the country.
According to him, he has been briefed by the director of free Senior High Sschools and he confirmed that in terms of food supply, largely almost all the schools have gotten their supplies. He indicated that it’s not only the food supply that has been catered for in these schools, but allocations have been made to defray some recurrent expenditure that the schools incurred, particularly by making provisions to buy some perishable items.
Mr Kwarteng emphasized that all those provisions have been made for them especially within the short space of their re-opening and there are other provisions as well to take care of other expenditures that will come up at the end of the day.
“Right now, a lot of suppliers distribute using the emergency response [and] in a matter of two weeks they’re paid so that they’ll have the capacity and willing to be able to distribute. Yes, in the past, there was food challenge occasioned by inflationary pressures but today, such problems have been resolved.”
Kwesi Kwarteng
Elaborating on the primary challenge the ministry encountered with supplying food to SHS in the country, Mr Kwarteng highlighted that it was as a result of issues beyond its control. He opined that the problems encountered led to some suppliers being paranoid in supplying food to the SHS campus.
Nonetheless, he expressed that the issue has thankfully been handled.
“I’m not running away from the fact that initially, we experienced some challenges within the food supply chain. I stated that it was occasioned by inflationary pressures that we had. So, the suppliers even though the capacity was there, were unwilling to make the supply… But today, as I speak, the minister for education, Dr Osei Adutwum, has intervened and there’s a different approach of distribution.”
Kwasi Kwarteng
Quality of meals served in senior high schools
Commenting on some complaints by students over the quality of food served them, Mr Kwarteng stated that although such complaints are relevant, they are not a generic problem among schools. He noted that considering the number of students fed in the various senior high schools in the country, there are bound to be some students with certain unique preferences who may not take well to meals served.
The PRO for the education ministry explained that if the ministry is committed to feeding 1.4 million students with different backgrounds and different taste variations, it is possible that such comments will come up.
“If it was the case that in all the almost eight hundred senior high schools, there was a general complaint on the quality of food then it’s a matter of concern. But it doesn’t mean that if students have raised such concerns, it’s not something that we should look into. We have looked at it from a commonsense approach.”
Kwesi Kwarteng
To address the problem, Mr Kwarteng indicated that the issue must be looked at from the perspective of the possibility of students raising individual reservations about the food that is prepared for them.
As far back as 2021, issues of food shortages in senior high schools surfaced due to the government’s failure to pay the company responsible for supplying food to the schools.
A letter from the Upper West Chairman of Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools to Regional Director of Education stated then that if government was unable to supply them food by 15th July 2022, parents and guardians would be asked to support their wards or face closure of schools as they would not have food to feed the students.
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