Search Page

The Ministry of Education is to launch an investigation into rotting maize meal for its school feeding programme found at a school. 500 bags of maize meal had been stored at a secondary school and not delivered to the intended beneficiaries. The company Meal Management Services holds the contract for the supply and delivery of food to primary schools in six regions.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has been successfully running school feeding programmes around the world for years. But in Ghana an independent audit recently revealed that the programme is mired in corruption. By May 2008, 477,714 pupils in 987 schools accross Ghana were benefiting from the programme and according to the Local Government Ministry, with an average of a 40 percent increase in primary school enrolment since the programme was introduced. But an independent school feeding motoring report said that enrolment in 14 selected schools nationwide increased only by 21 per cent between the 2005/2006 and 2006/2007 academic year.

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.

Against the backdrop of the ministry's policy to make education free of charge, the 2009 school year has begun, beset by shortages of supplies, lunches, furniture, and some teachers in public schools and institutions. Not only did pupils entering the schools have to take or buy their lunch but they also got an extended playtime, as the schools lacked the desks and teaching materials for the few teachers who were in place to give classes.

Operaciones y Descuentos Diversos, S.A. (Oddisa), a company chosen to prepare and distribute school lunches is under investigation for misappropriation of funds and money laundering. The many transactions, including accounts in Barbados, Luxembourg, and Paris, plus reports from schools in the provinces that stores of school-lunch products were burgled and other warehouses burned down, made it impossible to recover records.

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.

According to the 2013 Auditor General's report, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology failed to follow procurement rules in the year under review, thus violating the National Public Procurement Authority Act 2004. The report states that procurement procedures were not followed by ministry officials in violation of annual procurement plan of the ministry which stipulates a National Competitive Bidding and International Competitive Bidding methods to procure food for government boarding schools; teaching and learning materials; and textbooks.