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Former President John Dramani Mahama has challenged journalists in the country to conduct thorough investigation about his assertion that meals given to students at the Senior High School level are poorer than foods served to domestic animals.
The former president when speaking to party members in the Asikuma Odoben Brakwa Constituency in the Central Region, on March 29, 2023, said that the poor foods served the students under the Free SHS policy are evident in their physical developments.
“Today, if you look at the quality of food being served the students, pardon me, but I’m sure even dogs in their homes will not be served such poor quality of food. They come home from school very lean,” said Mr Mahama.
“The students are too parked in their dormitories for lack of space, and they come home with bedbugs and if you don’t disinfect their items, you’ll end up hosting lots of bedbugs in your home.
“I suggested that we have a national discussion on the free SHS program where various stakeholders and experts will share ideas about how to improve on the program, but the Akufo-Addo government declined, and we are all witnesses to what our students are going through at the senior high schools,” he added.
Mr. Mahama’s comments generated backlash from the governing New Patriotic Party with spokesperson of the Ghana Education Service, Kwasi Kwarteng describing the latter as one known for “unpresidential remarks, but little did we know he could be such loose, vulgar and low” while quizzing “how do you equate food for human beings to that of dogs?”
On Thursday, April 13, whiles addressing NDC delegates in New Juaben South and North in Koforidua as part of his three-day tour of the Eastern region, the presidential aspirant tasked the media to take it upon themselves and dig deep his comments for fact-checking.
“Recently I spoke about poor quality of meals for students in Senior high schools. But the NPP insulted me. I want Journalists to fact-check. This is a challenge to you (Journalists). Go to the SHS students to ask them about the quality of food being served.
“And as I said with apology that the food being served the children in school not even a dog will eat that food in the house, journalists go to the schools to interview the children and see for yourself if these are the kind of food Senior High School students deserve to eat.”
He maintained his stance that implementation of the Free SHS policy hasn’t been the best which has contributed to the poor quality of education currently ongoing under the NPP administration.
“Now the children can’t go to school to learn, they go to school three weeks and come home, their meals are bad. I have seen videos where food were being shared to students, the quality can’t be compared to what we feed them at home
“Parents are spending more on children now than when they were paying fees. That is why we have called for consultation with stakeholders to review but they went round to say I said I will cancel it. That is the propaganda they did in 2016.
“We started Free SHS with day students, at our time, day students were not paying school fees in secondary school – We announced we were going to start with boarding students so in the first year September we selected 140,000 boarding students for Free SHS so how I can cancel it,” the NDC flagbearer hopeful fumed.
