Govt's school feeding program to be launched

Accra, Sept. 6, GNA - The government's school feeding programme that targets about two million under-nourished pupils would be launched this month, President John Agyekum Kufuor said on Tuesday. He said the Ministries of Education and Sports, Food and Agriculture, Health and Women and Children's Affairs were pooling resources to start the programme on a pilot basis.

President Kufuor was welcoming a Dutch delegation, which is in the country to explore opportunities of joining hands with Ghana to make this successful.

Mr. Hans Eenhoorn, a member of the United Nations Millennium Task Force on Hunger, is the leader of the delegation.

President Kufuor said the financial cost of the implementation would be huge for the government alone to bear and it was on this basis that they felt relieved by the Dutch promise to support.

Mr. Eenhoorn said they were looking at the possibility of ensuring that the children were fed with locally produced nutritious food. The advantage was that, while the children were properly fed to become healthy and learn better, the economic situation of the farmers within the local environment would also improve, as they would be able to grow more food.