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The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, has announced plans to increase the subsidy for the school feeding programme.

The ministry hopes to boost school enrollment through the programme introduced about 11 years ago into the basic public school system.

The programme has in recent years been confronted with financial challenges since the Dutch government ended its support to it in 2007.

Many of the directors of education in the various regions have complained about the amount released by government for feeding per child.

The amount, which uses to be 50 pesewas per child, was increased to 80pesewas three months ago. But according to the directors of education, that is still inadequate to provide a nutritious meal.

At a stakeholders’ meeting in Accra, the Accra Regional Director of Education, Felicia Boakye-Yiadom, said “the quantity of the food, the 80 pesewas being fed per child which is less than 1 cedi is not enough. F

or most schools, the food is prepared from far distances and carried to the school on motorbikes and so sometimes it reaches the schools very late.

It means that the hot nutritious factor will not be met. Even the way the children are served is very bad. Some bring their plates but some are fed in polythene bags.” But in response to these challenges, the Minister of Gender, Women and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur told Citi News government has made new commitments to the programme.

“We are looking at increasing the feeding fee to 1 cedi 20 pesewas but we are still negotiating with the Ministry of Finance. It hasn’t been accepted yet but we are hoping it will be accepted very soon.”

Commenting on the quality of the meal, the Minister said her outfit is going to implement a new menu plan. “We have directed that we transition from having 216 menu plans per district to having three major menus and we can make use of the local produce. We will also collaborate with the Ghana Health Service which has a nutrition plan to ensure that the meals prepared by our caterers are of good quality.

The key objective is to ensure that we have a caterer who can cook quality food and who has complied with all our directives especially with the health, safety and nutrition of the meals.” The caterers under the programme have repeatedly complained about delays when they are supposed to be reimbursed for the services provided.

But the Ministry, which has now taken charge of the programme, says that challenge will be dealt with permanently. “We have cleared all the arrears.

The arrears we have now is for first term which is 70-days and we will be paying that by30th April and we can start processing payment for the subsequent terms. Payment has been made simple now because we are using an electronic system like mobile money” Nana Oye Lithur said.

There are currently over 1.5 million pupils on the school feeding programme. The ministry says it hopes to increase the number of beneficiaries to three million by the end of this year.