Since the inception of the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) in 2005, there have been allegations of misappropriation of funds and other related concerns raised by groups such as the Committee for Joint Action (CJA).
The basic concept is to provide children in primary schools and kindergarten with one hot, nutritious meal prepared from locally grown foodstuffs every school going day.
Target groups include deprived districts, poorest and most food insecure districts, low literacy, low enrollment and attendance level and high school drop-out rate districts.
To begin with, its first Executive Chairman, Dr. Amoako-Tuffour was dismissed according to the Local Government Minister to pave way for investigations into the activities of the programme as part of efforts to ensure efficiency into the programme.
Anomalies including alleged inflation of enrolment figures in a number of schools, feeding of school kids with unwholesome meals and administrative lapses in the operations of the programme, unearthed by an audit conducted by Pricewater
House Coopers, at the instance of the Royal Dutch Embassy were detected.
Now a guideline to provide a single source of information for officials of the GSFP including auditors, has been launched in Accra.
Issues in the guideline include measures intended to compel officials of the programme to maintain adequate record, monitoring of quality food served at the beneficiary schools and minimum number of times that the officials of the programme should meet at ordinary meeting to deliberate on matters affecting the programme.
Giving an overview of the manual, the Auditor General (AG), Mr. Edward Dua Agyemang noted that in view of the number of beneficiary primary schools involved and the expanding nature of the programme, effective monitoring could be achieved when the monitoring unit of the GSFP establishes offices in all regional capitals and eventually in all district capitals.
He stated that inspection of the quality of food and water served to pupils, ascertaining the actual number of school children at the school during the terms and investigating any discrepancies that would be detected are some of the duties to be fulfilled by the monitoring and evaluation officials.
“Even if it means tasting the food themselves they should do it. They are to monitor the receipt of kitchen items and foodstuffs from the National Secretariat (NS) and confirm the actual number of school days to ensure that any savings made as a reduction in the number of school days are reported and taken into consideration, during the next computation of feeding grants.”
According to him, district finance officers are required to maintain separate and adequate accounting records in respect of GSFP’s feeding grants received and the cost of bulk purchases made from them.
The caterers, he stressed are required to maintain basic accounting records which will enable any inspector to identify the amount of feeding grants released to them, the dates of the releases, the number of children who were served meals on each school day, as well as the dates and quantities of foodstuffs and kitchen equipments received from the District Implementation Committee (DIC) and the NS.
Mr. Dua Agyemang said district auditors are required to conduct monthly audit inspection of the accounting and store records of the DIC of the GSFP and also to visit beneficiary schools to examine their accounting records of the school implementation committee and the quality of food served to the children.
“Three months after the end of each year, the accounting records and financial statements of the GSFP should be prepared by the NS and submitted through the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment to the AG for his certification.”
He added that the AG may as a result of operational exigencies contract an accounting firm to conduct the audit of the GSFP and report on it.
He expressed concern about the negative and positive remarks made by the public about the GSFP, concluding that, “Some people go through life pleased that the glass is half full. Others spend a lifetime lamenting that the glass is half empty. The truth is that there is a glass with a certain volume of liquid in it. From there, it is up to us how we manage it.”
Mr. Michael Nsowah, National Coordinator of the GSFP recalled that the programme which began as a pilot project in September 2005 with ten primary schools, one in each region, currently has 987 public schools with 477,714 (four hundred and seventy-seven thousand, seven hundred and fourteen) children in all the 170 districts benefiting from it.
He announced plans to scale up the programme to benefit one million and forty thousand pupils by the end of the first phase in 2010.
No comments:
Post a Comment