THE government has been commended by local and international organisations for the bold step it has taken to provide one hot meal per day for schoolchildren in the country.
Many stakeholders, recognising the importance of the programme which was introduced as part of efforts to meet the objectives of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, have called on the authorities to extend the initiative to all basic schools in the country.
Indeed, this initiative, coupled with the Capitation Grant, has helped to increase school enrolment especially throughout the country.
It is not for fun that the sages say that “no army marches on an empty stomach”. In the same way, no serious learning and teaching exercise can be conducted in a school where the pupils think about where the next meal will come from.
Thus, before the introduction of these two initiatives, many parents preferred having their children at home to help them to make extra money to enrolling them in the formal school system to undergo character formation in order to grow up to become responsible adults.
In spite of the potential of the initiative to draw children who would have been on the streets into the classroom, all is not well with it. An audit report on the programme recently recorded its first casualty and other startling revelations, compelling the government to restore the integrity of the initiative by appointing a new corporate head.
The good news, however, is that the new leadership of the programme has decided to introduce new strategies to help plug the loopholes in order to safeguard the initiative.
The decision of the management of the programme to involve the district assemblies in the management of the scheme only demonstrates its appreciation of the realities on the ground.
For any exercise meant for the people to succeed, the decision-making process must involve the beneficiaries. Therefore, it is in order that the programme has decided to involve the district assemblies, the highest bodies with deliberative, executive and legislative functions at the local level.
In our age, the only way to ensure the ownership of any programme meant to improve the well-being of the people is by way of adopting the participatory decision-making mechanism.
The Daily Graphic thinks that the programme was bedevilled with the teething problems because, like many other initiatives, the beneficiaries were sidelined in the implementation process.
If parent/teacher associations (PTAs) and school management committees (SMCs) had been involved in the implementation of the school feeding programme, they would have joined forces with the authorities to expose the misfits in the system.
The Daily Graphic believes that the authorities have learnt useful lessons from the challenges that have bedevilled the programme so far. While we seek public support for the smooth implementation of the programme, we equally call on the leadership of the programme to apply the “naming and shaming” approach to get those in charge of the initiative — from cooks, head teachers to the co-ordinators — to do the right thing.
Quality education is a prerequisite for sustainable development and any initiative that will help the country to attain compulsory and universal education must be supported by all to ensure that Ghana is on track to attaining the objectives of the MDGs by 2015.
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