The National Food Buffer Stock Company says it has created about 12,000 jobs for licensed food buyers and about 9,860 jobs for licensed suppliers.

It adds by the time it took over the ‘Free SHS’ feeding programme, it had only 100 buyers licensed to purchase from farmers at the farm gates to the warehouses but “as of today, we have 1,300.

This means 1,200 new companies licensed by us between 2017 and now. So assuming each of them have 10 staff, it means 12,000 jobs have been created directly.”

“For our Licensed Suppliers, the recruitment was started when we took charge and after we were asked to take up the Free SHS supply.

"To date, we have 986 of such entities and if each of them have 10 staff, we are talking about creating jobs for some 9,860 people directly,” Chief Executive Hanan Abdul-Wahab further revealed.

The CEO made these revelations in a statement to address some comments made by former President John Mahama that the company only engaged members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) as suppliers and thus the schools have been encountering shortages in food supply.

Mr. Abdul-Wahab said his outfit fashioned out a system which allowed it to recruit more suppliers in addition to those who existed.

“In fact, in 2017 when we started the process, the school heads were asked to forward the list of their existing food suppliers for inclusion and this was done”.

Meanwhile, the National Buffer Stock Company says it has created about 2,000 indirect jobs for persons such as truck drivers, their mates and off-loaders. It has also created many job opportunities for local food processors engaged in gari, palm oil, cocoa powder, the machine operators among others.