School Feeding Program Operations to Go Full Digital | General news

Peacefmonline.com can authoritatively confirm that the Ghana School Feeding Program (GSFP) will be the last government organization to go digital as soon as possible.

When the GSFP digitizes its operations, tracking caterers will become straightforward and the case of the state funding the activities of unlicensed caterers will cease to exist.

Currently, the operation of the GSFP, which has more than 3 million students benefiting from government policy, is manual.

Deployed in 2006, the school feeding policy, which aims to improve food security and reduce hunger, offers students in disadvantaged communities a daily meal, in accordance with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (MDGs) on hunger, poverty and malnutrition.

Earlier this week, several calls were made for the government to overhaul the School Feeding Secretariat.

Allegations of ghost school payments surfaced, with some caterers claiming that the Secretariat paid some 510 ghost schools an amount of GHC12M in the 2019/2020 school year.

But reliable sources have hinted Peacefmonline, that the efforts of the current administrator of the program led by Ms. Gertrude Quashigah to keep their operations sanitary by eliminating other instances of funding from unapproved caterers, as well as to monitor and streamline operations, have precipitated these false statements.

This was after the GSFP recently launched measures to track and ban certain school feeding caterers who cook without letters of commitment.

“The GSFP operates within an approved budget and whenever some people try to force themselves into the program and are prevented from doing so, they turn around to blame the National Coordinator instead.“, revealed the source.

The program currently boasts of creating jobs for more than 10,000 caterers and more than 35,000 cooks in basic schools in 260 districts.

Read some of the GSFP’s achievements below:

• The program systematically provided children in public primary schools with a hot, nutritious meal prepared from locally grown foods every school day.

• Increase in student beneficiaries from 1,677,771 million in 2016 to 3,448,065 million.

• Provided jobs for 10,850 caterers and over 35,000 cooks working in 10,832 elementary schools in 260 districts.

• Drafting of the GSFP bill awaiting adoption by Parliament.

• Development of a new GSFP operational manual with support from UNICEF.

• Digitization of GSFP monitoring and evaluation tools financed by WFP. It is currently being piloted in some districts in all regions.

• It succeeded in reducing hunger and malnutrition among beneficiary children.

• It has also increased enrollment, attendance and retention, which has strengthened educational development in Ghana.

• With the support of the WFP World Food Program, the GSFP established for the first time in the history of the Program a national database on farmer organizations aimed at stimulating national food production.

• With the financial and technical support of development partners, in particular WFP, the GSFP organized a series of nutritional and innovative trainings for caterers and chefs in 11 of the 16 regions between 2019 and 2020 in order to improve use of alternative sources of protein and local foods. fabrics. Caterers were trained in the use of green leaves such as kontomire, cassava leaf, potato leaf, ayoyo and other local spices such as ginger, onion, garlic. which are cheaper and can be found in their communities to prepare different meals.

• Development of the GSFP menu planner and practical steps that essentially guide caterers on how to serve students with the right quality and quantity of meals. It was supported by WFP and the Partnership for Child Development (PCD).

● Introduced caterers to the use of Soya Chunks also known as Textured Soya Protein (TSP).

● Increase in the food subsidy per student beneficiary from 0.80 GHp to 1.00 GHC.

● Distributed a hot nutritious meal to all 3rd and 2nd cycle JHS students and teachers in public and private schools in Ghana. This initiative benefited approximately 584,000 students and 146,000 staff in 17,440 public and private lower secondary schools across the country.

It is therefore the hope of many Ghanaians that the full digitization of GSFP operations will be carried out before the next school year, not only to streamline activities, but also to ensure that all disadvantaged children benefit.