Managers of the National School Feeding programme have promised to go after caterers who fail to provide services to beneficiary schools even after receiving payment.
This warning comes after media reports emerged that some caterers contracted and paid to cook for pupils in the Afram Plains district of the Eastern Region have not been cooking.
Reports also suggested that the caterers had been paid monies running into thousands of Ghana cedis.
[contextly_sidebar id=”OIWdpeykEHf59h5Xoj4kJGmufQ5bIeoH”]Speaking in interview with Citi News, the National Coordinator of the programme, Seidu Adams bemoaned the situation adding that his outfit will ensure that the caterers are made to pay back the money.
He said an audit team will be sent to Afram Plains to “check things out.”
According to him, an audit team was scheduled to go to the area when the news broke but that notwithstanding, “we will send a special team to go and do intensive audit of the whole place and we will know the caterers and then we will see how we can get the refund from them.”
Mr. Adam added that whether they refund the money or not, sanctions will be instituted against them.
The school feeding programme was on the verge of collapse due to the many challenges it was experiencing.
While some caterers were demanding payment for services rendered after months of non-payment of funds, others were also accused of serving contaminated and worm infested food to the pupils which were not meeting the nutritional needs of the pupils.
But in May this year, the programme received funds from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning to defray its indebtedness to caterers under the programme.
Last month, the programme signed an agreement with an American company to improve the nutritional content of the food served pupils.
The company, Hershey Energizing Learning Nutrition Project, is expected to provide a highly fortified nutritional supplement to the food ration under the new agreement.
By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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