School feeding caterers will receive payment for arrears next week – Gender Minister assures

The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Lariba Zuweira Abudu has announced that the necessary auditing and validation has been completed for school feeding caterers to be paid their arrears from the 2022 academic year.

Addressing the press on Sunday, June 4, the Gender Minister indicated that the caterers will be paid next week.

“I want to give the assurance here that next week, caterers' arrears will be paid. We have done all the validation and auditing.

“The auditing takes time so we need time for it to be done well to ensure every caterer who has cooked has been captured and will be paid. Certainly, we will pay them and next week we are paying them,” Lariba Zuweira Abudu said.

This brings some relief to caterers under the School Feeding Programme who announced a nationwide strike in April over the non-payment of arrears and the failure of government to increase the amount per child for a day.

At the press briefing on Sunday, Lariba Zuweira Abudu who is also the Member of Parliament for Walewale applauded the caterers and thanked them for their patience and collaboration to resolve their grievances.

She assured that all pending issues and challenges facing the caterers will also be addressed.

“I want to applaud the caterers. They have been patient and I want to assure them that we are doing all we can to address the problems they have brought to my table. We are working around the clock and definitely we will solve the problems for them,” the Gender Minister said.

The Ghana School Feeding Programe is one of the social protection flagship programmes which is consistent with other major policies and development strategies of the Government such as the Ghana Shared Growth Development Agenda, and Ghana National Social Protection Strategy and currently hinging on SDGs 1, 2, 4 & 5.

There has been considerable growth and expansion of the programme from 1,671,777 beneficiaries in 2016 to 3,801,491 in 2023 in 10,832 public basic schools (KG to Primary 6).

Government says it is keen on improving the programme and extending it to all public schools across the country.

Meanwhile, the cost of feeding per head for a day which used to be GHS0.97 is being increased to GHS1.20p.