Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum
Government yesterday began supplying food items to Senior High Schools across the country. This comes on the back of assurance from the Ministry of Education that government is committed to keeping students in schools, despite the ongoing industrial action by the teacher unions.
The Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, at an emergency meeting with the leadership of the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) over the weekend, promised the schools of government’s readiness to deal with the food shortages in the various institutions.
Closure of schools
The Upper West Regional Chapter of CHASS, last week, threatened to close down schools over shortage of food on the various campuses.
In a statement, CHASS indicated that there were food shortages in all schools in the region, which had been caused by local suppliers’ refusal to supply food to various schools.
“It came out that the food suppliers contracted by Buffer Stock Company and those local suppliers contacted to help out are all refusing to supply due to non-payment of outstanding monies owed for food supplied to the schools. This has led to serious food shortages in all the schools in the region. In fact, an assessment of the situation indicated that most schools cannot go beyond one week if nothing urgent is done about it,” the statement said.
Dispatch of food
Subsequently, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Ministry of Education, Kwasi Kwarteng, told the media that the Ministry had moved to resolve the food challenges, assuring that, all things being equal, supplies would reach the schools by Tuesday, July 12, 2022 (yesterday).
As of the time of going to press yesterday, the Ministry had confirmed to the Daily Statesman that food items had been dispatched to some schools in the country.
“Arrangements have been concluded and food items have been dispatched to selected schools in the Ashanti, Bono, Ahafo, Central, Eastern, Greater Accra, Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions,” Mr Kwarteng told this paper.
He gave the assurance that the process would continue until all schools receive their food items.
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