Delay in release feeding grants: Special schools advised to buy supplies on credit

Responding to the concerns raised by the schools, the Minister of Education, Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyeman, said steps had been taken by the ministry to ensure that the subsidies were released to the schools.

As the government took steps to address the problem, she said, the managements of the various schools should also adopt strategies to alleviate the problem.

She told the Daily Graphic after surprised visits to the Demonstration School for the Deaf and the Akropong School for the Blind on the first day of the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) that once schools had worked with suppliers for a long time they could buy on credit or put in place other arrangements with the suppliers.

Prof. Opoku-Agyeman said the issue of the payment of subsidies was across board, and that it took a while for the money to come in.

'If you bother to find out how the government assesses funds you would know that sometimes there are challenges,' she said, and indicated that one could understand the plight of the schools.

She said it was not a good response for school heads to throw up their hands in despair but initiated measures on their own to mitigate the problem.

Story: Emmanuel Bonney / Daily Graphic