General News of Wednesday, 7 June 2023

Source: starrfm.com.gh

Pay our arrears and take up feeding of school children yourself – Caterers to government

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Caterers under the School Feeding Programme are asking government to pay them their arrears in full and take up the feeding of school children themselves as they cite dishonesty on the part of government.

The caterers had proposed a GHC3.50 allocation per meal for school pupils under the school feeding programme.

This comes on the heel of a counter-preposition by government to increase the feeding grant from 98pesewas to GHC1.20p.

Speaking to Starr News, Spokesperson of the National School Feeding Caterers Association, Dorothy Ofori Sarpong argued that the Gender Ministry should review its proposed GHC1.20P as she explains it’s woefully inadequate.

“We are not going to accept it, we’ve asked her[Minister] to go and come back because she said it’s a proposed figure, it’s not a confirmed one so she should go and tell those who helped her to propose that amount that we are not going to accept it.

“We will just ask her to pay all our arrears and then take their job because we cannot cook with GHC1.20P, we can’t. They have refused to even sit down with us and share the difficulties that the women are going through. We are stakeholders, they cannot take decisions and won’t consider us.

"They don’t care about whatever we are going through, whether it is good or bad they don’t care. They only impose what they want us to do on us, which we are not going to swallow anymore.”