GSFP seeking for more foreign assistance

The Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) was given GH¢60 million for its operations in 2011 by government as part of its contribution to the program.

The Dutch government which used to solely sponsor the Programme since its inception in 2005, redrew its support in 2007 when the managers of the Programme failed to abide by laid down rules and regulations.

Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on Wednesday, Mr Siba Alfa, Public Relations Officer, GSFP, said although the money was not enough to cater for all the budget of the Secretariat, other needs of the Programme was catered for in supplementary budget.

He said the Programme had now contracted the services of an internal auditor and developed a Management Information System (MIS) to safeguard its data and hopes that, by doing this, it would attract some foreign assistance.

He said the Programme now enjoyed assistance from the Partnership for Child Development, which is an organization based in the United Kingdom, to develop policies and recruit experts to manage its agricultural sectors as well as being supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Mr Alfa said, as management of the programme was working hard to win some sponsorship, it had also since September 2011 restructured itself to ensure that more deprived schools benefited from the programme adding that “as part of the restructuring, we embarked on re-targeting, which enabled us to redraw the programme from well-to-do schools to more deprived ones.”

He said the programme was now functional in all the 170 districts across the country and hoped to get more deprived schools under the programme.**