Accra, July 22, GNA - Some 987 public schools with 477,714 children in all 170 districts in Ghana are currently benefiting from the School Feeding Programme, Mr Michael Nsowah, National Coordinator of the Programme, announced in Accra on Tuesday. "The plan is to scale up the programme to benefit 1.040 million pupils by the end of the first phase in 2010," Mr Nsowah added. Speaking at the meet-the-press series in Accra, Mr Nsowah, who took office as the head of the programme some five weeks ago, said the total programme budget for the planned five-year period was estimated at 328 million dollars (270 million euros). This, he explained, comprised of a capital expenditure of 15 million dollars with operating expenditure of 287 million dollars and another 26 million dollars for other expenditures. He said plans were on-going to increase the 0.30 Ghana pesewa per child per day on meals to 0.40 Ghana pesewa to take case of current price hikes.

Mr Nsowah indicated that so far, the programme had been able to meet its basic concept of providing children in public schools and kindergartens with one hot nutritious meal, prepared from locally grown foodstuffs on every school going day. He said targeted districts involving deprived districts, poorest and most food insecure districts, low pre-school and school enrolment districts and low literacy levels had all benefited with improved record of increased enrolment, attendance and retention rates as well as general improvement.

The National Coordinator said a baseline study had been designed to support effective programme management on a consistent basis to enable routine programme monitoring and evaluation with the initial steps being the formation of a technical group of the collaborating MDAs who collect relevant data for the baseline. He said the feeding programme, apart from emphasizing on locally grown foodstuffs with a target to procure 80 per cent of the food from the locality, also ensured that all participating schools were provided with potable water and sanitation facilities. Mr Nsowah announced that all catering staffs were now being paid through the bank and that no caterer was paid or received money directly.

On challenges confronting the programme, Mr Nsowah said despite the numerous benefits, it was expensive for Ghana as a developing country to run the programme, therefore, the need to critically look at its sustainability. Consequently, various options were being considered in the form of general or special taxes that would be acceptable to the public to support the programme.