The money, which was released last week, will cover the first seven days for the first term of the 2016/2017 academic year.

[contextly_sidebar id=”qhWVoSfmvtBymFc31YWEdnfZB5lGGX3D”]Speaking to Citi News, the Public Relations Officer for Programme, Siba Alfa, also said efforts are being made to make another disbursement next week, to cover an additional sixteen days of the remaining hundred days’ arrears.

“Last week Thursday and Friday, we released seven days of feeding grant to the caterers. The seven days represents part of payment for the first term of 2017/2017 academic year, and we are hoping to make another payment next week Friday, which will be for 16 days, but afterward, we will request for additional funds to be able to clear all the arrears that we owe the caterers,“ he said.

Mr. Alfa explained that, in all, the programme has advanced more than 100 days of feeding grants to caterers so far in 2017, which amounts to GHc 140 million.

He said a request has been made to the Minister of Finance for funds to clear all the arrears.

Protests from caterers

In May, scores of caterers under the school feeding programme besieged the premises of the Ministry for Gender, Children and Social Protection, demanding the payment of their arrears.

Some of the caterers said they had not been paid for more than 8 months.

At the time, the National School Feeding Secretariat said it would pay the debt by the end of May.

Payment of the arrears has been seen to be filtering in to the caterers with the government recently releasing GHc 10 million to them.

The Ghana School Feeding Programme has been ongoing since 2005, under the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme Pillar III, in response to the first and second Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, and achieving universal primary education.

The basic idea of the program has been to provide pupils in public basic schools with one hot nutritious meal every day.

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By: Farida Yusuf/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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Some of the caterers operating in those deplorable structures have had to battle with snakes and other reptiles that find their way into the makeshift kitchens.

Some parents have raised concerns about the state of the kitchens, which has forced some of them to withdraw their wards from the schools.

This was confirmed when Citi News visited some basic schools in the New Juaben Municipality to assess the state of the kitchens, which poses a threat to the life and health of beneficiaries of the school feeding programme.

The first school Citi News visited was the Oyoko Roman Catholic School at Oyoko, near the Oyoko Catholic Church. The kitchen for the school feeding programme is sited right on the school’s compound; in between the primary school and the JHS blocks.

A stagnant drain lies right behind the kitchen, serving as a breeding ground for flies and other insects. The wooden structure which serves as kitchen for some 300 pupils, floods and becomes inaccessible during the rainy season.

As if this isn’t enough, some teachers revealed to Citi News how the caterers engage some of the pupils in the kitchen, sending them on errands even during contact hours.

“We see the kids carrying water and other items going about and when you ask them where they  are heading to, they say the caterers have sent them so we informed our headmaster who then told the caterers to put a stop to that”

Citi News then visited the Nana Oware Agyapong MA at Nyamekrom, also in the New Juaben Municipality where the caterers cook from a dilapidated wooden structure, with holes in the roofing sheets.

The assembly member of Nyamekrom Peter Otukunor, explained how several attempts made to the Municipal Assembly to fix the problem have proved futile.

“Last year (2017), we managed to get the Municipal Chief Executive to come and inspect this structure, he promised to work on it for us but nothing was done about it, and the new MCE has also been here to see for herself the condition on the ground, and still the situation is the same. I will continue to push till I get a positive response from them.”

This situation according to the headmaster of the school, Okyere Boateng Samuel, has affected enrollment as parents who are more concerned about the health and safety of their wards have withdrawn them from the school.

“The problem we have here is with our kitchen, it is in a bad state and because of that parents have withdrawn their wards to other schools just because they are not comfortable with the kitchen structure where food will be prepared and served to their kids.”

Startled by these worrying revelations, Citi News went ahead to find out the situation from other schools in the Municipality .

Others schools visited, namely Nyamekrom,  Mpayem LA, Asokore Methodist, Apempoa Islamic school, and AME Zion had similar challenges.

It is believed that many more schools across the entire Eastern Region, particularly in the rural areas, may be facing the same challenge.

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By: Neil Nii Amatey Kanarku/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Unclean, dilapidated kitchens threatening school feeding in New Juaben appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

According to him ”we [Ghana] have been living beyond our means and [we] must borrow from the domestic and external markets to finance the deficits including soverigning bond issues in capital market”.

In a lecture delivered on Tuesday at the Distinguished Speaker Series organised by the Central University College in Accra, Prof. Botchwey said Ghana cannot afford to live beyond its means because the cedi is not a strong currency to support over spending.

He said contries like the United States and Britain can get away with living above it means because their currencies are ”a good store of value”.

He noted that the consequence of government’s over-spending has led to our public indebtedness reaching the limits of our external viability.

”As a nation we must understand that borrowing from any source; whether from the financial markets, through bond issues or treasury bills does carry its own conditions…,” he said.

According to the NDC stalwart it is the interest of Ghana to cut down cost and spend within its budget.

”Borrowing from international markets thus carry its own conditions and are not markedly different from the conditions from borrowing from IMF,” he warned.

”The country can decide that we will not go to IMF for funds; we can decide that instead of medium term drawings from the IMF at lower cost, we will borrow from international markets at greater costs and short tenure and with pretty much the same conditions,” he added.

He said it does not matter which of the choices we make, when we do not have clearly spelt out policies which would convince our patners that we are able to pay for the loans we are taking then it would even be difficult for the creditors to give out the loans in the first place.

”Let us be clear, nothing comes free,” he noted.

By: Evans Effah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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Taking his turn at the Distinguished Speaker Series organised by the Central University College, Prof Kwesi Botchwey said, ”Mahamudu is a young man whose professional credentials I particularly respect; I offer no rebuttals [to his lecture]. On the contrary, I do agree with much of what he said.”

According to Professor Botchwey a nation’s political economy shows the way political forces influence economic decisions.

” We must study and analyze the true state of things,” he noted.

Reflecting on what he called the critical challenges affecting the country’s political economy, the former Finance Minister said, ”I see a nation reeling in widespread disaffection; a bit of despair…, a popular mood that is marked by some frustration and rising cynicism about any and all utterances,explanation and assurances by government and even by technocrats and public servants.”

He said the feeling out there supposes that ”everybody in public office is somehow engaged in corruption and just money grabbing”.

He also added that this has led to indiscipline on our roads as motorist defy the laws. ”I see a spillover of this mood onto our roads in the breakdown of discipline as motorists take the law into their our hands and defy traffic lights and the police,” he said.

Touching on the macro-economic stability of the country, Mr. Botchwey said there is the need for managers of the economy to pay attention to ”policy credibility” for the restoration of macro-economic stability.

”We have missed macro-economic targets in  two consecutive years with budget outcomes deviating not marginally…; but rather significantly from published forecast,” he said.

He furthered explained that there have been some erosion of the country’s credibility among the public and developing partners.

Professor Botchwey also mentioned that the panic driven changes in measures announced by the Bank of Ghana have not worked because ”the very structure of government expenditure had begun to impose a certain rigidity on the national budget”.

”In last year’s budget alone; the wage bill and interest cost on public debt accounted for about 82 percent of government spending,” he added.

He noted that during the National Economic Forum in Senchi the group [participants] noted that government expenditure has become inefffective for the attainment of growth.

”There is a need therefore to align the expenditures of the earmarked or statutory funds to the national budget taking into consideration the administrative and legal aspect of such an alignment,” he said.

In a lecture delivered in May at the Distinguished Speaker Series organised by the Central University College in Accra, Dr Bawumia painted a very gloomy picture of the Ghanaian economy

“I’ll like to repeat without exaggeration that the Ghanaian economy is in a crisis,” Dr Bawumia said, pointing to high inflation, double digit budget deficit, depreciation of the cedi, and the general lack of growth in the economy.

The Distinguished Speaker series organized by the Central University College is under the theme  “State of the Nation’s Political Economy and the Role of Civil Society”.

By: Evans Effah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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