PAY UNANNOUNCED VISISTS TO SCHOOLS (PAGE 35, JUNE 9, 2010)

THE Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Samuel Ofosu, has tasked 21 municipal and district chief executives (M/DCEs) in the region to pay regular, unannounced visits to the basic schools benefiting from the School Feeding Programme.
He said such visits would make the caterers to observe strict health and safety rules in the preparation of food for the schoolchildren.
Besides, he said, they would help them assess at first-hand the quality and quantity of food being served to the pupils and also put a stop to the use of unwholesome ingredients by some “unscrupulous caterers”.
Mr Ofosu Ampofo said “it is time we collectively stopped and exposed bad practices and the desire of greedy individuals bent on making undue profit at the expense of our future leaders”.
The regional minister was addressing the M/DCEs and their co-ordinating directors, officials of the Ghana Education Service and other stakeholders at the regional inauguration of the district School Feeding Programme implementation committees in Koforidua on Tuesday.
The committees are to see to the successful implementation of the programme and ensure that it operates within acceptable standards at the municipal and district levels.
Mr Ofosu Ampofo said the introduction of the School Feeding Programme by the government had become one of the important social interventions that had increased access to education and learning, as well as improved children’s health and nutrition, especially for pupils from the deprived communities.
He was, however, unhappy about the several reported cases of pupils being fed on unwholesome food items by the very individuals whose services had been engaged to prepare food for them.
The regional minister, therefore, urged the M/DCEs and the committees in the region to be proactive in ensuring effective monitoring of the programme in their respective areas.
“Since schoolchildren of today are the embodiment of the nation’s future leaders, the burden of ensuring their educational development should be the duty of every Ghanaian,” he stressed.
Mr Ofosu Ampofo appealed to the chief executives to give priority to the extension of the programme to poor communities that deserved it.
He urged them to ensure that locally produced food items were used in the preparation of meals for the pupils, adding that “using locally sourced food will not only inculcate the consumption of local food in the children, but also provide reliable income for local farmers”.