Ghanaian media personality and broadcaster Serwaa Amihere has strongly criticised Ghana's School Feeding Programme, highlighting numerous issues the initiative faces.

During a broadcast on GHOne TV on 17 July 2024, she referred to a November 2019 monitoring report by the Auditor General and cited cases of poor-quality food given to pupils.

She cited the case of pupils at Asokore Methodist Basic B School in the Eastern Region being served banku without soup and described the situation as "bizarre."

“Can you imagine? Students were given banku without soup to eat with what? But that's not all. There were complaints of food either lacking or having inadequate protein, foreign materials in the meals, bad palm oil served with watery beans, and a general bad smell and taste of food,” she said.

She noted that these issues are not new and have been a recurring problem under the school feeding programme.

According to the Auditor General, caterers have attributed their inability to provide adequate and nutritious meals to insufficient feeding fees and payment delays.

Currently, each student is allocated 1.20 cedis per meal, which Serwaa Amihere argued is insufficient to provide a proper meal.

She called for an increase in the feeding fee, suggesting that 4 cedis per child would be more appropriate to ensure decent meals.

“How are you assigning GH₵1.20 worth to pupils to feed? What food do you expect them to eat and why won't they give them banku without soup?

“If you also decide to work with the child average cost consensus on the African continent using the current dollar rates of GH₵15 to a dollar, that means the actual cost for a proper meal is about GH₵4 per child. That should give us some decent meals for the pupils,” she added.

She also criticised the government for allocating funds for other purposes while neglecting the nutritional needs of schoolchildren.

“Just think about it and know the kind of country that we are in. Tell me if those who have allocated that amount of money as feeding grant will allocate that amount of money to their children… What can it buy for you? How much is waakye? How much is banku? How much is rice water or Tom Brown?

“Do they hate these students so much to give them that kind of food? You can't tell me that that's all that we can do. It's not possible because we have clearly shown that we have money for other things. Very useless. But we do have money and so if we have money, isn't that what we should be giving to the children?” she said.

ID/NOQ

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