As various key players continue to device measures to ensure all children are enrolled in school, the Deputy Central Minister, Thomas Yaw Agyei-Baffo has identified the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) as the best gizmo to attract more children to access education.
He is therefore calling on the Government and for that matter the GSFP Secretariat to consider to increase the number of school feeding beneficiary schools in Central Region to cover all the deprived schools if not the entire basic schools.
Speaking in Cape Coast at the opening of the Central Region version of the ongoing nationwide training of trainers’ workshop being organized by the Ghana School Feeding Programme National Secretariat, Hon. Agyei-Baffo described the region as the fourth poorest in Ghana, which required more social intervention programmes like the school feeding to develop.
The Deputy Regional Minister said he and his Minister, Hon. Kwamena Duncan had been encumbered with many proposals from majority of the deprived schools seeking integration into the School Feeding, which he said they well deserved because of the level of their vulnerabilities.
Dr. Mrs. Gertrude Quashigah, Deputy National Coordinator, GSFP
Hon. Agyei-Baffo indicated that, “the Central Region presently has 665 basic schools enjoying the school feeding programme, as compared to the 332 schools in 2016â€.
“You know this school feeding programme started in President Kufuor’s time so it’s NPP’s baby. Nana Akufo-Addo’s government came to meet 332 basic schools and we have added 323 and still hoping to do more in the Central Regionâ€.
He said that there are many schools in the region especially in the coastal part that are very vulnerable and required the support of the school feeding programme to encourage parents to send their children to school instead of forcing them into child labour along the coast.
On her part, the Deputy National Coordinator of the Ghana School Feeding Programme, Dr. Mrs. Gertrude Quashigah on behalf of the National Coordinator, Dr. Kwame Adu Nsiah welcomed the participants for accepting the challenge to train themselves with the mindset of going down to train the caterers in their respective districts.
She said that the training programme which is being funded by the World Food Programme (WFP) is meant to equip caterers of the school feeding programme to become innovative in their menu planning and to ensure they provide nutritious meal to the children.
Dr. Mrs. Quashigah therefore charged the participants to take every lessons seriously so that they could transfer the right information to the caterers.
She said the School Feeding Programme is key in Ghana’s social, economic and educational development as it aims at reducing hunger and malnutrition, increasing school enrolment, attendance and retention as well as reducing poverty and boosting domestic food production; and charged the stakeholders to fully support it.
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