The Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, Kofi Asare, says the overly politicised nature of the School Feeding Programme has led to its many deficiencies.
According to him, most of the caterers recruited under the programme were party members.
Thus, making it virtually impossible for caterers to demand better standards of services from authority.
Speaking on JoyNews’ The Pulse, the Executive Director stressed that since the inception of the programme, the caterers awarded the contracts were on the merits of their commitment to the party.
“Our’s [School Feeding Programme] has become a reward mechanism for party loyalists. The caterers are all NPP people if another government comes within two weeks they all lose their jobs. We have been doing this to ourselves since 2005.
“So when you have such a transactional school feeding program what happens is that when you are making cogent demands for price adjustment you are seen to be a beneficiary and so shut up,” he told host, Blessed Sogah on Wednesday.
Mr Asare argued that political contracts was evident in the way the Ashanti Regional Minister ignored the caterers when they visited his office to demand better conditions of services.
Mr Asare added that if those caterers were professionals, the Regional Minister would not have treated them the way he did.
“He is surprised because these are women who we are doing a favour by dishing out political contracts to them. You can’t talk to professional caterers that way. You can’t.
“So the transactional nature and overly politicized nature of the school feeding program makes it difficult for the caterers to demand quality improvement in the management of the program,” he said.
The Executive Director argued recruitment of party faithfuls was part reason caterers had since 2018 accepted 96 pesewas as payment per head despite the constant food inflation.
The Educational expert also advised that the policy of the entire programme is reformed by basing it on community ownership and community initiatives.
By this, he said the community must mobilise food grown in the locality for caterers, and where the community lacks ingredients government then comes in to support
He stressed that “it has to be community-led” project so it functions as it is supposed to.
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