Monday, August 31, 2009

ASHANTI RCC REVIEWS SCHOOL FEEDING PROGRAMME (PAGE 11)

THE Ashanti Regional Co-ordinating Council (RCC) is reviewing the school feeding programme in the region with the view to bringing sanity into the system.
Consequently, it has asked all caterers under the programme to reapply to their various districts for consideration.
The RCC has also urged the people to desist from politicising what was going on, saying they were in line with best practices.
A statement issued by the RCC and signed by its Public Relations Officer, Mr Ernest Brogya Gyenfi, said under the new arrangement, an individual could have access to one school instead of the previous system where one person controlled five or more schools.
Persons who were not trained as caterers would also not be entertained in the programme.
“We are interested in caterers who will be in the kitchen to cook or supervise cooking and not those who will run the programme from their offices far away from the schools,” the statement said.
The statement said District Implementation Committees (DICs) and School Implementation Committees (SICs) would be created where there were none and be empowered to supervise the programme at their level.
It mentioned the recent castigation of the Deputy Regional Minister, Ms Anima Wilson, by a section of the people for allegedly sacking operators of the programme and said the allegations against the deputy minister were untrue.
The statement stressed that the programme was under the control of the District Chief Executives who were heads of the DICs.
It was, therefore, not out of place for the deputy regional minister to supervise a better part of the programme.
The statement said any caterer who failed to reapply could not blame the deputy regional minister or any other person for the consequences.
The RCC said the ultimate aim of the programme was to provide delicious and healthy meals for pupils in order to make it attractive for children to attend school regularly and increase enrolment.
In this regard, any individual whose main objective was to make huge profits from the programme could not be entertained, the statement warned.
It indicated that the school-feeding programme was very important to the government, which will do everything to sustain it and also hopes to extend it to all schools by the end of 2010.

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