Food vendors certified by the Ghana Education Service (GES), to cook and sell food to school children in the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis, have undergone a day’s training on personal hygiene and sanitation.

The participants drawn from New Takoradi and Ngyiresia were sensitised on the need to cook and serve healthy meals and keep their environment clean, in order to prevent the spread of communicable diseases such as diarrheoa and cholera.

The workshop was organised by the Opportunity Industrialisation Centre International (OICI), a non-governmental organisation, in collaboration with the GES in Sekondi.

It was funded by the Tullow Ghana, major operator at the Jubilee Field and its partners under “Tweneboah, Enyera, Ntomme (TEN) WASH in School” project, which would be implemented within a period of one year, with a yearly roll-out for five years.

Mr Ebenezer Tetteh Tawiah, the Metropolitan Health Education Coordinator of the GES, urged food vendors to undergo regular medical check-ups to ascertain their health status.

He said officers from the Health Education Unit of the GES often go round the various schools in the metropolis, to monitor food vendors and warned that those who flout the regulations governing food preparations and presentation would be banned from cooking meals.

Mr George Dorgbetor, the Project Manager of OICI in charge of the TEN WASH in School project, outlined the overall goals and strategies of the project.

He noted that the project would contribute positively towards enhancing the health of the pupils as well as the standards of living of the beneficiary communities.

He took participants through proper hand washing procedures as well as sanitation and hygiene tit bits and asked them to strictly observe them.

Madam Louisa Brooth, the Headmistress of Ngyiresia Rhyner Paul Anglican Primary School, advised the participants to avoid wearing artificial nails for cooking food and put up appropriate dressing so that faecal materials do not enter the food.