The Deputy Ranking Member of the Education Select Committee in Parliament and MP for Builsa South, Dr Clement Apaak has waded into the conversation surrounding the quality and quantity of meals that are served to students in second cycle institutions.
According to Mr Apaak, students in the various Second cycle institutions are in their adolescent stages and cannot be served unbalanced meals because that would have dire consequences for their health and safety.
He stated that “we in the NDC have concerns on its ( Free SHS ) implementation and I have raised on many occasions these issues. what the main challenge is, is in the area of feeding and that is why I continue to raise the alarm bells and continue to speak the minds and concerns and issues that bother the heads of institutions”.
“As we speak now, parents have to move in to augment the feeding of their wards. We now have all sorts of dishes; gari jollof, donkey saliva, I mean, the quality of food in itself is detrimental to the wellbeing of these young adolescents. This is the thing that we ought to understand that adolescence is the formative stage of every human being, and so nutritional needs must be taken seriously,” he stressed.
His comments are on the recent reports on local media that students were served unbalanced meals.
Mr Apaak blamed the dwindling quality and quantity of meals served to students on the over-centralization of the supply chain. He said this means that Heads of second cycle institutions have no say in the food they receive. The MP claimed that some suppliers under the programme even supply expired products.
“What is happening is that the headmasters of institutions or the managers of the institutions have no say with regards to the quantity of food they get. All they have to do is to sign and receive. Because they are not part of the process, some of these buffer stock suppliers have used the schools as dumping grounds so we have examples where expired food items will be provided to schools,” he revealed.
He has therefore called on the government to set up a special performance auditing on the free senior high school policy.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1 MHz|Kennedy Zongbil|Bolgatanga|Ghana
