School feeding policy almost ready

The Minister for Local Government and Rural Development, Samuel Ofosu Ampofo has announced government is working on a tight deadline to formulate a School feeding policy by the end of the year.

He said the state school feeding policy would be backed by legislation to ensure continuity of the programme.

Samuel Ofosu Ampofo was speaking at the commissioning of a $ 2.7 million dollar School Nutrition Project at Abokobi near Accra.

The project funded by Dubai Cares, an international philanthropic organization would take care of 320,000 school children from 82, 000 rural households.

Mr. Ofosu Ampofo said government has already scaled up budgetary allocations for the programme adding, a sum of 60 million Ghana cedis was spent on feeding school children in 2011 alone.

He also added a further 60 million Ghana cedis has been allocated in the 2012 budget to support school feeding.

The Chief Executive of Dubai Cares, Tariq Al Gurg expressed the hope the aid would support hunger and poverty alleviation efforts in Ghana.

He said the project will be carried out in four years with an awareness creation component on educational campaign targeted at parents on the importance of providing nutritious meals to children.

He added the programme would also target the local economy utilizing produce of local farmers and caterers.