Government has directed the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection to take over the supervision of the School Feeding Programme from the Local Government Ministry.

A communiqué from the Office of the Chief of Staff has ordered that the Gender Ministry provide oversight of the programme from this month.

Activities of the School Feeding programme since its inception has been coordinated at the local level through the assemblies.

It is unclear what has prompted the change.

But Country Director for SEND Foundation, George Osei-Obimpeh believes the action could be part of moves to bring social protection programmes under the Gender ministry.

“From the policy side you may think that we want to get some policy coherence for which reason all social intervention programmes must be under one ministry so to that extent that is fine, there’s harmonisation there”.

He was however sceptical about how the Gender Ministry will manage and effectively oversee the programme.

“I am wondering the mechanisms that the ministry is going to put in place to ensure that they supervise a programme that is not directly being implemented by agencies under them.

“How are they going to make sure that inter-ministerial or inter-department or interagency coordination will be smooth and effective”, he quizzed.

He however hopes that the implementation will still be in line with the decentralisation policy to ensure a smooth run of the programme.