Executive director of the Institute for Educational Studies (IFEST), Dr Peter Anti, has expressed the need for government to provide caterers with enough monies to ensure quality food, thereby ensuring quality assurance to assess nutrition of meals prepared.

According to him, the amount of money that is being pushed into the programme should be enough to ensure quality food for the kids. He explained that once government is able to pay these caterers the requisite amount of money they will need to function well, they will have no cause to prepare anything less.

Dr Anti stated that as it stands now, government is paying some 90p, which does not give them enough leverage to ensure accountability from caterers.

“So, how do you ensure this quality bit of the feeding that you are supposed to check? That is why we need to give them the requisite money that they need and we can check the kind of food they are giving our wards. Then we can hold them accountable when they cook anything at all and they are serving the kids with it. As it stands now, quality assurance becomes difficult to do because you’re not giving them the money that they need to be able to serve the kind of food the kids require.”
Dr Peter Anti

Furthermore, Dr Anti underscored the need for government to revisit documents reviewed in 2015 by the gender ministry. This, he explained, is a perfect document that should be the blueprint that should guide the implementation of the school feeding programme.

“If you look at that document, it tells you the various ways we can finance the policy, it shows you how this policy can build up the local economy and empower people within the various communities that are benefiting from the school feeding programme. Unfortunately, we’ve thrown the document away and we are implementing it in a way we think it’s okay and I think that we should go back to this.”
Dr Peter Anti

Increment of school feeding money not satisfactory

Reacting to the finance minister, Ken Ofori-Atta’s statement that the school feeding budget will be increased, Dr Anti stated that the remarks by the finance minister is not “satisfactory enough”. He highlighted that people who have the authority to make important decisions about the feeding in public basic schools should not do so only under pressured.

“… I believe that they know the importance of this particular policy and that is why it’s being sustained since its inception in 2005. So, I think that this is something that should have happened earlier on and it should be instituted as early as possible. Again, I don’t know the nature of the increment because as I’ve been made to believe, the finance minister did not indicate the amount that they are increasing the feeding to and that is a very important bit of the advocacy that we are doing. Because we need to know how much they are going to pay for the kids.”
Dr Peter Anti

The executive director of IFEST revealed that the last time the caterers spoke on the issue, they demanded GHC3, of which the gender minister proposed some GH1.20p. Due to the unclear amount dedicated to the caterers in the finance minister’s statement, he emphasized that the increment must be made known.

“So, the minister of finance shouldn’t give an open statement just like that without giving us the right amount they are going to pay these caterers. We should also understand that those of us with our kids in private schools pay between GHC10 to GHC20 per day for feeding of our wards. So, it doesn’t make sense to me giving these caterers even GHC5 will guarantee any quality food for the kids and that should also be pushed forcefully for the minister of finance to take that into consideration as they think about increasing the school feeding budget.”
Dr Peter Anti