Tell them to go and burn themselves in the sea

Outgoing Local Government and Rural Development Minister, Stephen Asamoah Boateng on Wednesday night lunged into his accusers, and irked by what he said was an unsubstantiated embezzlement allegation, asked them “to go to hell.”

Some officials of the Ghana School Feeding Programme are accusing the Minister of taking unilateral decisions that are gradually stifling the laudable programme, besides being responsible for 1.5 billion cedis unaccounted for.

“Tell them to go to hell… Tell them to go and burn themselves in the sea. Really I’m getting upset with these innuendoes and if Dr. Amoako Tuffour wants to come and discuss, he has every right to come and do that.

“If he doesn’t think that he can deal with me as he says, his younger brother: that’s what he is behaving like a senior brother who wants to hit the head of his younger brother and because he can’t have his way, then there are superiors and in this case the President, you understand, and the Chief of Staff.

“In fact he has been there and he has been told to provide some information for them and he hasn’t done it so really…I won’t answer that and I think my response that he can go and burn the sea is appropriate,” Asamoah Boateng told Joy News anchor Evans Mensah.

Some caterers contracted to cook for selected school children across the country under the School Feeding Programme that provides free meals for school children, are bitter that for the past six weeks they have not been given any monies to prepare the usual meals.

Some of the caterers told the Accra-based radio station -JOYFM - Alex Kobina Mensah they had had to borrow at current interest rates to sustain the programme in their schools, but the Programme Secretariat says it cannot be blamed because the Local Government Ministry is withholding the funds.

In a letter dated July 9, 2007, Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Stephen Asamoah Boateng informed the Director of the School Feeding Secretariat, Dr. Amoako Tuffour, that Cabinet has decided to deal directly with Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies, as part of its decentralization agenda.

The move was also to put some speed into the operations of the programme, because according to Mr. Asamoah Boateng, the programme was not delivering to expectation.

However, high ranking officials at the School Feeding Secretariat say the Minister took the decision unilaterally, a charge he vehemently denies.

One of the caterers said she was at the end of her wits end after borrowing huge sums to sustain the programme, rated number one in Africa by the NEPAD Secretariat. She hoped whatever differences existed would be resolved as soon as practicable.