The Member of Parliament for the Binduri Constituency in the Upper East Region, Abanga Abdullai has asked the caterer providing food for students of the Binduri Community Day Senior High School to report back to duty as the government is at its final stage of releasing all the monies owed.
According to the MP, follow-ups have been made to various authorities in charge of processing her necessary documents and much assurance has been given to that effect.
“I got informed of the matter by the District Education Director a day ago, and I must say that I’m following it up. In fact, I contacted those in charge of the school feeding programme at the national level and they have assured that her documents have been processed and funds will be released to her soon. So, I will call on her to report back to duty come Monday so that effective teaching and learning can bounce back again”, he stressed.
On 11 of July, 2023, the First and second-year students of the Binduri Community Day Senior High staged a protest and abandoned school activities over the failure of the school caterer to provide them with food. According to the students, the caterer for close to two months stopped preparing lunch for them and as a result decided to boycott academic activities.
However, the caterer at the centre, according to the school authorities, clarified that the government was owing her close to two years of nonpayment of arrears.
But speaking on the issue on Daybreak Upper East Show on A1 Radio, the MP noted that he could not fathom the actions of the students and why they ought to boycott school activities because of lunch.
He thought, “I’m totally surprised by their actions. The students in the first place knew that the school is a day school and will only be provided with one meal. And if that meal is not coming just for a few days then the best way for them is to be protesting and boycotting school activities. Come on, there is something more to it and not the meal. Tell me, if you can self-feed yourself for morning and evening for all this while and just a few days that the caterer couldn’t prepare that hot meal for you then you think boycotting school activities is the best way, then that is not good thinking because your colleagues elsewhere are learning and you are here losing a bigtime. So, I plead with the students to go back to the classrooms, it will do them good.”
He therefore appealed to political actors in the region to desist from using the issue to gain “cheap” political points.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1 MHz|Moses Apiah|Ghana
