Thanks to Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Member of Parliament for North Tongo, Ghanaians would not have known that their Senior High School (SHS) Students are been fed with expired foods. This latest scandal that government have again served expired food to our SHS students is very worrying and unpardonable and the architects of this evil deed must be sanctioned appropriately. Dr Bawumia’s name has become synonymous with expired foods and most importantly rice and this latest scandal must not be let go.
We must remember that in 2018, Dr. Bawumia donated relief items to flood victims in Walembelle, a major community in the Sissala East Municipality on the 22nd of September, 2018. It latter emerged that the oil donated to the victims were expired and the rice was not labeled at all.
Graphic Online reported that; “but while some of the cooking oil seen by Graphic Online had September 10, 2018 as expiry date, the rice seen by Graphic Online did not have expiry date at all.” Beneficiaries of the relief items complained of food poisoning after consuming the rice and oil.
We must also remember the office of the Vice President, Dr. Bawumia used fictitious documents to steal a businessman’s imported consignment of 10,000 bags of rice for Ramadan donations. This scandal is still not addressed to cleanse Dr. Bawumia as incorruptible. It is clear that anytime Bawumia gets close to anything rice, a scandal pops up.
It is thefore no wonder that expired rice is being shared to our Senior High School (SHS) students. Expired foods do not only luck nutritional value and quality but also result in food poisoning causing fever, stomach cramps, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and sometimes death. Nutrition experts also say chemical contamination from expired food can lead to long-term diseases, such as cancer.
This is the danger our SHS students are exposed to and we must not allow it to continue. The reset of the Free SHS should be earlier than now and President Mahama’s promise to reset the fSHS must be accepted by all. We have no choice!
The major problem with the poor feeding in the SHSs is the centralisation of food procurement at the Buffer Stock Company. The NDC in the Resetting Ghana Manifesto promised to address this by decentralising the procurement of food and other basic supplies to heads of the SHSs. This will ensure timely food supply, prevent distribution of expired foods and improve the quantity and quality of food for students. This has been the norm in the past and challenges like this were almost non-existent.
President Mahama’s Resetting Ghana Manifesto also promised to address the overcrowding in the schools by embarking on an emergency infrastructure drive to complete abandoned E-blocks and expand infrastructure in existing SHSs and TVET institutions. John Mahama will also extend Free SHS to cover students in private SHSs.
The NDC again will abolish the double-track system to restore a stable academic calendar. The irregular academic calendar is a worry to many parents and educational stakeholders and certainty must be restored. The calendar was predictable pre-double-track and we need to get back to it so that parents can better plan to send their children to school.
The lack of dedicated source of funding has been forcing the government to practice ‘try and error’ funding. The new NDC government will address this by providing a dedicated and sustainable funding source for quality secondary education by ring-fencing a percentage of our oil proceeds. This will address the funding challenge thereby eliminating the double-track, poor feeding, irregular calendar, and lack of textbooks including several other challenges.
Maintaining the current government will mean that we do not value the lives of our SHSs students. We must do all we can to stop Dr. Bawumia and the NPP from forcing them to sign their death warrants through food poisoning. Mahama is the solution and the Free SHS is more resilient and immortal with him as the next president of Ghana.
Source: Taluta Gbanha Mahama| Sissala West District| Contributor
