A former Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Michael Nsowah has said government has been insincere with the payment of the arrears owed caterers under the Ghana School Feeding Programme(GSFP).
The Ghana National School Feeding Programme is on the verge of collapse as government owes some caterers over 100 million Ghana cedis.
The amount represents arrears accumulated in the 2013/2014 academic year alone.
The cateres threatened to stop preparing meals for the pupils if the GSFP fails to release money to them within two weeks.
[contextly_sidebar id=”fKv1E9iinNT8dfgPDnVyJiNCerscQrc8″]But speaking to Citi News, Michael Nsowah said government should be held responsible for the problem since it has not shown commitment to resolving the challenge.
“I continue to say that these monies were accured so where is the money?What has happened?If the government is having challenges why does it not come out to say that these are the challenges that they are facing? …we are being told that if we are not careful the whole thing will collapse, yes, because the money that should go and support the programme is not there and nobody is saying why it is not there or when these monies were approved in the budget,” Mr. Nsowah fumed.
Meanwhile a Deputy Local Government and Rural Minister, Nii Lante Vandepuijie has said the outanding arrears cannot be paid until the District Assemblies receive their share of the Common Fund.
He said his Ministry is working assiduously to mobilize funds to pay caterers their outstanding claims.
“The Ministry is looking forward for the release of funding to pay the rest of the indebtedness to caterers… We have a problem with the releases of Common Fund to make the payment of the caterers much more frequent but the Ministry is also working out a procedure where we could also from our own sources, release funding in order to cater for the arrears so that when the releases are made, we will be able to reimburse the resources, “he explained.
By: Marian Efe Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana