William N. Jalulah
13 January 2009
A CROSS-section of pupils in the Primary and Junior High schools (JHS) in the Bolgatanga Municipality, have attended a public forum on the fairness and equity in the selection of basic schools for the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP).
Addressing the pupils, the President of Northern Patriots in Research and Advocacy (NORPRA), organisers of the forum, Mr. Adongo Bismarck Ayorogo, lamented that the three northern regions, have over the years, not been fairly treated in the area of national resource allocation.
According to Mr. Adongo, in 2005, five schools from each district were selected in accordance with the planned distribution formula, where poverty was considered. After the selection, however, the National Secretariat of the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) put aside the formula, and applied an equal distributions formula, of one school per region, and no more per district.
He said the Secretariat, in 2006, extended this to one school per district. The Dutch government came in to support the programme in 2006, and in December 2007, when 975 schools were benefiting from the programme.
The President of NORPRA explained that the equal distribution formula was then ignored, and Kumasi Metropolis alone, with 10% incidence of poverty, had 100 schools selected, as against 80 schools selected from the entire three northern regions, which have an average incidence of poverty of 70%, with districts such as Bongo, Tolon and Nadowli, having poverty rates of 99, 99, and 96% respectively.
Mr. Adongo said this development was not only negatively promoting the feeling of 'one nation, two people' in Ghana, but also seriously undermining and contravening Article 17 of the 1992 Constitution, which is against discrimination of any form.
He claimed the situation appeared to have worsened under the former New Patriotic Party (NPP) regime, and that evidence abounds that there were well-coordinated efforts and wickedly formulated plans, by the powers that be, to put the whole north in perpetual deprivation, poverty, and ignorance, through marginalisation and discriminatory policy and actions.
He criticised northern politicians, who he said, should have been resisting this 'injustice, unfairness, cheating and robbery' for the sake of the poor, but rather chose to always justify the unjustifiable, and defend the indefensible, just to ensure that their bread was always buttered.
Some of the pupils, who spoke to Upper East File, lamented that most times they do not get food to eat in their homes, before going to school. And since the feeding programme was only covering fewer schools, some of them were sometimes compelled by circumstances, to do blue-collar jobs to feed themselves at the expense of their education.
They, therefore, appealed to the government, to extend the programme to cover all the primary and JHS schools, in the three regions of the North.
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