GSFP HAS LOST ITS FOCUS

GSFP has lost its focus

Story: Moses Dotsey Aklorbortu, Takoradi

The Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) is said to have lost its concept and direction as its services does not get to intended deprived communities in the districts across the country.

Rather, schools in district and regional capitals are covered leaving the intended rural, deprived and poor communities uncovered.

The concept of GSFP, according to experts at orientation workshop in Takoradi was to provide ready market for locally produced foodstuff in the deprived communities, but its concentration on the urban areas was not help the course.

Sadly according the experts, foods stuff produced in the intended deprived local communities by poor farmers are also not patronized, therefore, leaving the local communities more disadvantaged and poorer than before.

The focus of GSFP they said was to target deprived communities across the country and not those in urban and district capitals. But the programme has been overly concentrated in urban centers.

With the Western Region as an example, chunk of the beneficiaries in the region are in the Sekondi/Takoradi Metropolitan area and other district and municipal capitals, while the deprived communities have less or no coverage at all.

The Sekondi/Takoradi alone had a total of 26 schools, with total of 10,958 pupils benefiting, while other districts with high rate of deprivation had little or no coverage.

According to the Assistant Director at the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, Mrs Irene Mercibah, based on the principle of the programme, the menu should be 80 per cent purely locally produce food stuff but that was not the case.

She said other objective of the programme was to contribute to poverty reduction and to improve food security in deprived communities.

The assistant director said the bigger concept encompasses the ministry of food and agriculture, and other technical ministries and its foreign partners to ensure that GSFP provided the ready market for the locally produce food stuff; therefore, help in the transformation of the local economy.

She explained that if the programme did not get to the deprived communities as expected, those who would be buying in the urban centers had to settle for high prices which would not help compared to the amount allocated to it child in the beneficiary schools.

Mrs Mercibah said some of the objectives were also to increase school enrollment, attendance, and retention and to reduce short term hunger, malnutrition among school children and to boost domestic food production.

For her part, the Deputy Western Regional Minister, Ms Betty Bosumtwi-Sam, it was wrong for deprived areas to left out or giving limited coverage.

She said while the metropolis had beneficiaries of more than 10,958 pupils in 26 schools under it, Prestea/Huni-Valley had five schools with 1,431 pupils, Shama also had five with 4,849 pupils, Amenfi East with seven schools with 3,206 and Bia with 6 schools with 3,338 pupils.

She wondered why the metropolitan/municipal district assemblies with all the facilities compared to a village in Enchi or other deprived parts of the region.

Ms Bosumtwi-Sam said another problem worthy of noting was the corrupt practice that characterized the programme which nearly incurred the displeasure of the donor partners threat to withdraw their support if transparency and proper accounting system were not applied.

That aside, she said sadly, some of the beneficiary schools have every poor structures to accommodate the activities of the caterers.

Other key stakeholders such as agriculture, education and health had been neglected thereby depriving the programme of its contribution.

Various districts were taking through financial management for the GSFP, the responsibilities of the district assemblies, sample of equipment procedures among others.