Govt Must Deal With School Feeding Fraud—Send Ghana

A Deputy Director Send Ghana, Emmanuel Oyifa wants government to crack the whip if it wants to win the war against widespread irregularities in the implementation of the school feeding policy.

Emmanuel Oyifa insists that will be the only way to curb the intransigence that has attended the implementation of the policy.

He was speaking to Joy News’ Evans Mensah on 'Top Story' shortly after it emerged the National Coordinator of the policy has been asked to step aside over allegations of corruption.

Kwame Adu-Nsiah is being accused of paying monies to the tune of GHS141, 075 to caterers who have not been assigned to any school by the outfit.

There are also allegations of inflation of the number of beneficiaries which has led to dubious payments.

He has since been asked to handover by close of day Thursday to his Deputy whilst an independent investigation process begins.

The school feeding policy was introduced under the tenure of the John Kufuor administration in order to provide fresh hot meal to students in the primary level.

The rationale is to encourage children of school going age to attend school because there will be a hot meal served in school.

Figures suggest the number of school enrolment increased with the implementation of the policy.

Notwithstanding the benefits of the policy, it has become a subject of nepotism, political cronyism and corruption.

Think tank, Send Ghana did a thorough investigation of the policy two years ago and discovered a number of irregularities.

Its Deputy Director complained of inconsistencies in school enrolment figures.

He also raised issues of poor quality of food which was as a result of low monitoring and supervision.

He would rather the government enhances its monitoring mechanisms to ensure the project is better implemented.

He also applauded the decision to have the National Coordinator step aside adding without cracking the whip others might just repeat the wrongs of their predecessors.

---Myjoyonline