Children benefitting from school feeding to enjoy free healthcare
All schoolchildren benefiting from the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) are to access free healthcare with effect from the first quarter of 2016.
Advertisement
According to the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur, the over 1.7 million pupils under the GSFP would be registered with the National Health Insurance Scheme.
She made this known at the opening of a two- day workshop on “National Learning Event 2015” organised by the GSFP for its stakeholders in Accra Tuesday.
The event was on the theme, “Revitalising GSFP for improved Productive Inclusion: now and the future”.
She further stated that the initiative would help the ministry come out with a database of the number of children benefiting from the programme, thereby addressing the issue of over bloating.
“We would get data on the real number of children who are being fed because we have instances where there have been over bloating of numbers of children. The biometric card would be used to create the database and we will have the right numbers and not have caterers or other people increasing the figures,’’ she stated.
Restructuring
Nana Oye Lithur mentioned that the GSFP was undergoing restructuring to make it efficient in order to address the nutritional needs of Ghanaian children.
She said the GSFP policy would be submitted to Cabinet before the close of the year for approval
Other Trending Stories
The policy will develop a broad framework to guide the implementation of the School Feeding Programme, she added.
Nutrition Conference
In terms of food quality, Nana Oye Lithur said a national nutrition conference would be held early next year to brainstorm a menu plan for the children.
That, she said, would include researchers, academia, UNICEF, the Ministry of Education and other stakeholders.
The minister also announced that caterers would be paid electronically by the end of this month.
In his welcoming address, the National Coordinator of the GSFP, Mr Patrick Achampong said the workshop was to share information, discuss opportunities, lessons, challenges and devising mechanisms for moving the feeding programme forward.
He said the event would also help the GSFP to forge a better partnership with its stakeholders in the implementation of the feeding programme.