PRESS RELEASE: SEND GHANA CALLS ON GOVERNMENT TO FULLY AND IMMEDIATELY IMPLEMENT THE AUDITOR GENERAL’S RECOMMENDATIONS ON THE GHANA SCHOOL FEEDING PROGRAMME
- On August 20, 2019
August 19, 2019
SEND-GHANA has taken notice of media reports that suggest several financial irregularities in the running of the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) as contained in the 2018 Auditor-General’s Report. The report uncovered among others, bloated enrollment figures, duplication of schools and payments of grants to non-existent caterers in the 2017-2018 academic year, as well as unsubstantiated and unsupported transactions, accounting for huge loses of public funds running into millions of Ghana cedis.
It is recalled that, in December 2018, investigation by the National Security established financial malpractices in the management of the School Feeding Programme, which has led to the suspension of the National Coordinator in charge of the programme, pending further investigations. The National Coordinator and his outfit is alleged to have perpetrated “fraudulent deals”, including inflating enrollment figures of some schools under the GSFP, compared to the figures of the Ghana Education Services (GES) for the 2017/2018 academic year, and paying monies to caterers who have not been assigned to any school by the School Feeding Secretariat.