By Lucy Mawufemor Kpeglo
The Minister designate for Gender, Children, and Social Protection, Agnes Naa Momo Lartey, has expressed her commitment to maintaining and improving the School Feeding Programme during her term of office by providing quality food supplies and services to ensure the well-being of students.
Appearing before the Appointments Committee of Parliament, the Member of Parliament for Krowor Constituency responded to some challenges faced by the programme under the previous government, including arrears owed to caterers from various schools, as well as issues regarding the quality and timeliness of food supply.
“There’s an indication that about 48 days have been paid, with 31 days in arrears in terms of what is owed to the caterers. I will work within the framework to ensure that the rest of the payment is made with the finance minister and the education minister,” she stated.
According to her, despite the challenges faced, she believes the school feeding programme is a good project but needs more improvement in terms of quality and accessibility of food supply.
“The other side is the processes leading to the feeding, ensuring that there’s quality, as well as accessibility and timeliness in terms of the supply,” she added.
In response to how she plans to solve these challenges, she stated that decentralising the school feeding programme could be beneficial.
“Part of my life is also local governance, so when it comes to decentralisation, I believe that if we are able to effectively decentralize the feeding programme, it will help us ensure that food items are supplied on time, and we can also monitor the quality from the district level,” she mentioned.
She expressed her readiness to collaborate with stakeholders to ensure that implementation is possible.
