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The Deputy Ranking Member on Parliament’s Educational Committee, Dr Clement Abass Apaak, has called on the government to demonstrate commitment toward its flagship Free Senior High School programme.
The call is in connection with the resurfacing food crisis in Senior High Schools across the country with schools in the Volta Region at the centre: Alavanyo Senior High Technical School, Avatime Senior High School and St Paul’s Senior High School.
A video that went viral on social media, particularly Twitter, showed some students of St. Paul’s Senior High School purportedly sharing a fish during dining suggesting the acute shortage of food in the school.
The Headmaster of the Alavanyo Senior High Technical School has in a letter addressed to the Volta Regional Coordinator of the Free SHS indicated that food supplied to the school has run out.
According to Rev Samuel Pius Elewokor, the headmaster, the students were fed with only breakfast and supper which would not last beyond September 30, 2022, hence an emergency response was needed.
In a separate letter to the Volta Regional Director of the Ghana Educational Service, the Avatime Senior High School Management through the headmistress, Rebecca Mawusi Veny, indicated that as of September 29, 2022, the school had only four bags of maize, two bags of sugar and few tin tomatoes.
She thus sought permission for the students to buy their own food if nothing was done about the food situation.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament (MP) for Builsa South Constituency, speaking in an interview with 3FM monitored by Angelonline.com.gh in regard to the development attributed the situation to a leadership crisis.
According to him, people who are put in positions to run the day-to-day affairs of the various organizations to the benefit of the general public “have a fundamental problem with sincerity, honesty and transparency and admitting where we get it wrong so that we can look at taking correctional measures.”
Dr Clement Apaak stated that parliament approved a total of GH₵2.3 billion to fund the Free SHS programme for the year 2022 and therefore was unfortunate that the government could not make arrangements to avert the situation even when the year has not ended.
“When you have a government that comes to parliament seeking funding to support a programme that it describes as a flagship program or policy and parliament does the needful by approving some 2.3 billion cedis to fund the free SHS for the year 2022 and yet almost every other month we hear of reports of shortages of food as a result of the inability to pay buffer stock food suppliers and to remit 30 per cent of the feeding fee to the schools to procure perishables.
“We ought to question the sincerity and integrity and commitment of government because it does not make sense. The year has not ended and if we have voted 2.3 billion how come we are unable to find a medium to a long-term arrangement that would allow for meals to be available to students regularly so that this current arrangement where the students are either starving or malnourished or heads have come to their wits’ end and are planning to send students home will come to an end.
