The President of the Africa Institute of Journalism and Communication, Mr Kojo Yankah, has kicked against the School Feeding Programme. He said it is ill-informed and unsustainable, and lampooned the media for failing to track its implementation in order to analyze the impact of the programme on the schools and pupils. He said: "I'm against the School Feeding Programme. They should create school farms to teach school children how to farm." Mr Yankah, who doubles as the Board Chairman of Public Agenda, made this observation at a day’s media training workshop in Accra. The workshop was organised by Public Agenda in collaboration with Rights and Voice Initiative, an NGO, to equip media practitioners with up-to-date information and practices on decentralization. The workshop was under the theme: "Policing Procurement at the Municipal, Metropolitan and the District Assembly Level." Stating that the media is skewed toward urban centres, he argued that urbanisation is placing more challenges on local government. The AIJC president described local government as a corporate system that is expected to work as a facilitator. He said responsible civic journalism involves engaging citizens in active public discussions. The former MP for Agona Swedru urged the media to embrace pro-active civic journalism since it reconnects the media with the citizenry, and furthers civic culture. "Lets involved communities in our reportage." He said it was necessary for the media "to create and seize opportunities to set community priorities, local government agenda, public service standards" instead of creating "empty noise." Mr Yankah noted that the media play dual role of serving as a watchdog for citizens’ rights and government accountability as well as acting as a responsible corporate citizen in a democracy. "Local government and media have joint responsibility to communicate the laws to the citizens as well as seek their reactions to laws. Media should encourage dialogue with the citizens over laws governing the environment." Credit: The Statesman