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School Feeding ‘illegally’ invested GHC 16m with Dalex, Cal Bank – Report

The programme invested GHC 5,000,000 and GHC 11,000,000 on July 29 and July 8 with Dalex Finance and Leasing Company and Cal Bank respectively.

According to the report, the investment was illegal because government agencies are not “required to make such investments unless with the express approval of the Minister of Finance.”

It further said management’s use of its resources in such a manner “undermines the effort of government in providing prompt services for the successful implementation of the School Feeding Programme.”

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Responding to this claim, Chief Executive Officer for Dalex Finance and Leasing Company, Ken Thompson said that the money was invested at a commercial rate at the time and subsequently “paid back.”

He added that government agencies regularly to make such payments to financial institutions, using the money they have no immediate need for the money.

“Institutions place money with us all the time, and the rates we give for the money that we receive is at the rate at the time. I presume the money they gave us was money they had received and did not have the immediate use for it.”

These happened when the erstwhile Mahama administration was in power. The Ministry was then headed by Nana Oye Lithur.

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Meanwhile, scores of caterers under the School Feeding Programme have protested a couple of times demanding their arrears.

The basic idea of the school feeding programme has been to provide pupils in primary public schools with one hot, nutritious meal every day.

Payment of the arrears has been seen to be filtering into the caterers with the government recently releasing GHc 10 million to them.

The Ghana School Feeding Programme has been ongoing since 2005, under the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme Pillar III, in response to the first and second Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on eradicating extreme poverty and hunger and achieving the universal primary education.

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