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Spokesmen for Ghana National School Feeding Associations called on the President and the Ministry of Education to investigate corrupt officials who exploit the system for their personal gains. During the 2019/2020 Academic year, the Ghana National School Feeding Programme paid GH¢12.9 million to individuals benefitting 511 ghost schools across the country that were not included in the school feeding programme.

Two people are in hot water after allegedly defrauding the Mpumalanga Department of Education of an estimated R6-million. The two appeared in the Nelspruit Regional Court on Thursday over their alleged involvement in a bogus school-feeding scheme. The Hawks said that in 2011 the accused allegedly submitted several fraudulent invoices to the Department of Education for services never rendered. An employee of the Department of Health allegedly recruited owners of various companies to submit these invoices. The money was allegedly deposited into the said businesses accounts, as well as individual accounts and was subsequently withdrawn and shared amongst the syndicate.

There have been cases of corruption related to school feeding in the municipality of Santander in Colombia. The contract worth $30 million, intended for the children of Santander, was awarded to a company with no expertise in cooking or nutrition.

THE HRD Ministry is set to launch a programme next month that would probably be the world’s largest student tracking system, sources said. Shala Asmita (All School Monitoring, Individual Tracing Analysis) Yojana (SAY) aims to track the educational journey of close to 25 crore school students from Class I to Class XII across 15 lakh schools in the country. This online database will carry information about student attendance and enrolment, mid-day meal service, learning outcomes and infrastructural facilities, among other things, on one platform for both private and government schools.

In a rural district of Uganda, almost half of all teachers were absent on a typical school day. The African Network for the Prevention and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN) trained a few student leaders in each school to take attendance of everyone, including teachers. As a result, teacher absenteeism has dropped to ten percent in this district.

Massive quantities of food grains and fuel, meant to be distributed through the public distribution system or to be given to the poor under welfare schemes like food-for-work and school meals for poor children, have been stolen over the years and sold on the open market.

The President has denied the claim of schools to charge monetary lunch fee for pupils under the Universal Primary Education (UPE), arguing that this program was conceived for poor families that could not afford additional fees. Besides, he declared that the pay of un-necessary amounts of money will create additional barriers to the free UPE as the ones that already exist; expensive uniforms, books, tours and others items.