Mahama challenges journalists to fact check 'dog meals' for SHS students

The presumptive Presidential candidate of the Opposition National Democratic Congress, NDC, John Dramani Mahama has challenged the media to fact check his comment about poor feeding of Senior High School students.

Mr. Mahama came under verbal attack by the governing New Patriotic Party when he said even dogs will reject food being served students under the Free SHS program.

Speaking to delegates in New Juaben North and South as part of his three- day tour of Eastern region which ends on Thursday he explained that “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 said the poor implementation of Free Senior High School has impaired quality education at the secondary level however government is reluctant to listen to stakeholders for review of the policy.

According to Mr. Mahama, the constitution envisaged these challenges reason it prescribed a progressively free education which the NDC started.

However for populist agenda to win election, Akufo Addo decided to implement the policy wholesale hence the serious challenges affecting the policy.

“When you came everything Free SHS. 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 sad I will cancel it .That is the propaganda they did in 2016. But we started Free SHS with day students .At our time, day students were not paying schools 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 can I cancel it “. Mr.Mahama said.