School Feeding Coordinator suspended over fictitious deals; feeding ‘ghost’ schools

The National Coordinator for the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP), Dr. Kwame Adu-Nsiah has been asked to step aside after “fraudulent deals” were discovered in the running of the programme.

This follows investigations into the programme by the National Security.

A letter addressed to the Coordinator and signed by the Gender, Children and Social Protection Minister, Cynthia Morrison, dated December 13, 2018 accused Dr. Adu-Nsiah of inflating figures of schools under the programme.

He was also cited for awarding contracts to “fictitious” caterers to provide services to non-existing schools.

The caterers, 3news.com gathered have been wrongly paid about GHC 141,075 for the third term of 2017/2018 academic year.

“In the view of the above, you are directed to stop the regional monitoring exercise and step aside while the ministry carries out an independent investigation into the matter.”

Dr. Adu-Nsiah has been directed to hand over to his deputy.

The orders are to be carried out by National Coordinator of the School Feeding Programme by close of Friday, December 14, 2018.

The Ghana School Feeding Programme is a social intervention policy which implementation started in 2005 to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger and achieving universal primary education.

The basic idea of the program has been to provide children in public primary schools and kindergartens with one hot nutritious meal, prepared from locally grown foodstuffs, on every school-going day.