The Executive Director of Eduwatch Africa, Kofi Asare, says the government spends 70 percent of its budget allocated for Free SHS on feeding.

According to him, about 1.3 to 1.4 billion is spent a year on feeding Free SHS students. This, in his view, contributes to the reasons for the current food supply challenges facing the schools.

“Out of the 2.3bn, 70 percent is just feeding, there are other aspects of the bill – uniforms, school cloth, exercise books etc feeding alone is about 70 percent,” he reiterated.

Speaking in an interview on JoyNews' Newsfile on Saturday, he stated that the huge amount used for feeding has resulted in liquidity difficulties.

“While funds delay can be managed, those affecting feeding can hardly be managed because the children are in boarding houses. So the delay in funding has caused suppliers who say their funds have been locked up, some being owed as far back as September last year,” he added.

Kofi Asare therefore suggested that parents of students from private junior high schools could be allowed to pay for their wards’ fees to save government some money to support the feeding challenges currently experienced.

“If we ask parents of private junior high school students to pay their free senior high school fees, the average free senior high school fee government is paying is GHC1,500 for a whole year, so if we have these parents who came from the private sector to pay their GHC1,500 for a whole year as Free SHS school fees, what will happen is that government will save GHC520m to support what we are now struggling to finance,” he stressed.

He also proposed for government to explore cost optimization, adding that “we can reduce certain costs and still maintain the value of the policy (Free SHS) to ensure that the poor, marginalized and vulnerable are not denied of secondary education on the basis of fees,”