The primary responsibility of every government is to promote economic growth and as well enhance standard of living for its citizens. This can be achieved when the human resource of the nation is developed. To achieve this, there is the need for the provision of quality basic education to the people including the poor and marginalized in the society. The Ghana School Feeding Proramme (GSFP) is one the pro-poor policies which seeks to enhance food security and reduce hunger in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on hunger, poverty and malnutrition. The programme which provides children in public primary schools (4-12) with one hot nutritious meal, prepared from locally grown foodstuffs, on every school going day has encountered a lot of shortfalls.
Since the inception, the GSFP has been bedevilled with numerous challenges including poor sanitation/ hygiene practices, low quality of food served, delay in paying caterers and lack of effective monitoring and supervision. The government has been forced to sacrifice the Programme for other policies due to lack of fund and periodization. Consequently, the caterers are unable to receive the requisite compensation for their services, forcing them to cut corners and thereby compromising on the quality of food being served to hundreds of thousands of basic school pupils every day for lunch. As at December 2021 the government budget allow a paltry GHc 1 feeding fee per a child per one hot meal a day. This amount has drawn sneers from critics including the caterers because GHC1 can hardly satisfy the needs of a growing child.
Considering, the contest above an estimated number of 3.3 million pupil across the country could be deprived from the 3 most important benefits of early childhood nutrition;
- Building immunity against various infectious diseases,
- Ensures proper development of the brain and other vital organs and improves a child’s activity levels and
- Cognitive functioning.
Therefore, proper nutrition for children is important as it sets the stage for them towards living a healthy and balanced life for the rest of their lives.
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