President and Vice President of Ghana, Bawumia and Nana Addo
Some headmasters of mission Senior High Schools in the Eastern Region are soliciting emergency support from their churches to help feed hungry students.
A headmaster in one of the mission schools who spoke under condition of anonymity revealed that the school has run out of food making it difficult to feed the students. He added that out of frustration, he wrote a letter to the Church for emergency intervention.
The intervention by the Church has sustained the school for some few weeks now but is currently almost out of stock again.
Meanwhile, the Eastern Regional branch of the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) has sent a resolution to the Ministry of Education after an emergency meeting on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, on the shortage of food in the schools.
Excerpts of the resolution state “Suppliers of food items for some time now have been supplying underweight items to the schools. An example is 100 kg of Maize has been reduced to 50 kg or 60 kg,”.
CHASS also lamented over nonpayment of arrears making management of the schools very difficult.
“Since 2021, funds meant for recurrent [expenses], have been released once. By extension, recurrent funds are in arrears since 2021 and 6 months into 2022,”
The Eastern Regional chapter of CHASS has therefore recommended to Ghana Education Service (GES) to either close down the schools by Friday, July 15, 2022, or direct parents to either feed their wards or pick them home until the situation normalizes.
Senior High Schools in the country have run out of food. The Upper West branch of CHASS served notice last week of the imminent closure of the schools due to the situation.
The National Buffer Stock company has however said it has dispatched truck loads of food to the schools, but, the schools are yet to receive the supply.
The Speaker of Parliament has meanwhile constituted an ad-hoc body of five parliamentary committees to probe the activities of the National Food Buffer Stock Company and the National School Feeding Programme.
The mandate of the committees among others is to look into the feasibility and sustainability of the organization.