By Dennis Peprah
Sunyani, June 10, GNA – The Bono Regional chapter of the Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition (GNECC) has appealed to the government to increase feeding grants, under the Ghana School Feeding Programme.
The coalition described the current feeding grant of GHC0.97 per child as woefully inadequate, and called for an increment to GhC2.00
At a meeting of the council members of the coalition, held in Sunyani, the members further implored government to address the delays in the release of funds to the caterers.
Speaking at the meeting, Mr Raphael Godlove Ahenu, the Bono Regional Coordinator of the GNECC, advised the caterers under the programme to increase the nutritional content of meals they prepared for the school children.
“We visited one of the beneficiary schools at the community level and the kind of meals the caterers have prepared for these innocent school children were highly unacceptable,” he stated.
Mr Simon Asore, a council member of the GNECC in the Bono Region, also said prompt and regular release of the feeding grants would ease the undue pressure on the caterers who had borrowed or credited to cook for these school children.
He was of the view that the feeding grants ought to be increased to GhC3.00 due to the increase in prices of food items in the country.
Mr Kobina Afena-Sam, the Bono Regional Chairman of the GNECC, said the school feeding programme was a laudable initiative, hence the need to tackle the bottlenecks impeding the programme.
“The feeding programme has sustained the interest of many children to go to school,” he said, and called on the government to consider extending the programme to benefit junior high school students as well.
Mr. Afena-Sam said the programme must also be expanded or extended to cover and benefit every public school in deprived areas at the community level.
GNA