World Food Programme unveils new Ghana programme
The World Food Programme (WFP) has introduced a new country programme to augment the old one by providing food for deprived girl-children in deprived communities to encourage them to attend school regularly.
The move would ensure the girls’ retention in school until they successfully complete their education.
The programme, which would be run in components, is also expected to improve the school feeding programme nationwide and would start from January 2012 and end in December 2016.
Mr Aboubacar Koisha, Head of WFP in charge of the three northern regions, said this during a three-day Monitoring and Evaluation workshop organised for partners and staff of WFP at Bolgatanga.
The workshop brought together partners including the Ghana Education Service, the Ghana Health Service, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, District Assemblies and NGOs from the Upper East and Upper West Regions.
It was to empower the partners to effectively manage the WFP new Country Programme.
Speaking at the workshop on Tuesday, Mr Koisha said unlike the previous WFP, which operated on activities, the new programme implementation would be based on components.
He said Component One would run the school feeding programme in deprived schools and also provide food for deprived girls in order to encourage them to attend school regularly as well as ensure their retention and successful completion of their education.
Component Two would help address the nutritional and health needs of people living with HIV/AIDS and Component Three would support women groups in income generating activities.
Mr Koisha said the WFP programme would also support the Ministry of Food and Agriculture under the Food Security and Monitoring System to help avert food shortage in the country particularly in the three northern regions.
“The Participatory Relief and Recovering Process which is being implemented under the previous programme and is supposed to end in 2009 has been extended to 2012 to continue to cater for floods and chieftaincy issues in the three northern regions”, he said.
Mr Koisha said under the new programme, the Government of Ghana would take full charge of the logistics needs including transportation and storage of food to be supplied to the WFP operational areas in the country, adding that a memorandum of understanding has already been signed between the WFP and the Government of Ghana.
He mentioned some of the major challenges facing the implementation of the programme as the inability of implementers to provide tracking performance records from the field and said donors were very interested in knowing how their funds are used.
He mentioned resource constrain as another challenge facing the programme and said the Country Programme Director was outside sourcing for funds and urged the implementing partners to use the food items and support from the WFP judiciously and ensure that the real beneficiaries got them.
Source: GNA