BE TRANSPARENT IN DISCHARGING DUTIES ...School Feeding Programme officers advised (PAGE 11, MARCH 12, 2010)

THE National Co-ordinator of the Ghana School Feeding Programme, Alhaji Abdul Rahman, has urged regional co-ordinators and desk officers of the scheme to be transparent and honest in the discharge of their duties to ensure its successful implementation in the country.
He advised them to refrain from linking the programme to partisan politics and rather let the feeding of the beneficiary schoolchildren with nutritional meals remain their main interest.
At a meeting with the staff of the programme at Koforidua, Mr Rahman said “as staff of the scheme, you must not engage in any action that will compromise efforts at clearing the image of the scheme of corruption and politics, which are inimical to its development”.
The meeting was aimed at collating data from co-ordinators and desk officers of the scheme in the Greater Accra, Eastern and Volta regions to inform future decision-making processes to improve and expand the implementation of the programme across the country.
Such a move, he said, would ensure that the implementation of the initiative would be devoid of corruption and politics, which threatened its successful implementation in the past.
As staff of the scheme, you must refrain from diverting money meant for the programme into your pockets and resist attempts to inflate figures in order not to deprive the children of warm and nutritional meals under the feeding programme on a daily basis, Alhaji Rahman stated.
The national co-ordinator said on assumption of office this year, the scheme was faced with some problems, which affected its implementation.
According to him, efforts were currently being made to enhance the image of the scheme to enable them to become socially accountable to stakeholders.
He indicated that the scheme, which was the only school feeding programme being run in Africa, was very important to the government and it had approved GH¢50 million this year for the programme as against GH¢39 million spent on the initiative last year.
He also indicated that the Dutch Government had earmarked GH¢12 million while the Bill and Linda Gates Foundation had pledged money for the programme.
The Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, urged the staff of the scheme to prepare local dishes for the children to enable them to appreciate “their local diets”.