“Let me say if the government prioritises school feeding by showing concern for basic education, the caterers can be paid tomorrow to resume cooking for the children,” he said.

Mr. Kovey, who was speaking with the Ghana News Agency in an interview, said the programme targeted primary pupils from poor households with the hope of increasing access and retention in school, yet the country had failed to focus on agriculture to support it.

The programme curently feeds about 3.4 million children, excluding Junior High schools, and some 1.2 million children are yet to be enrolled in school, according to the Ghana Statistical Service report.

The CAPCOE Convenor said the government’s inability to pay the caterers was due to the fact that the only source of funding for the programme, GETfund, had been capped under the Earmarked Funds and Realignment Act (2017) at 25 percent and further capped at 17 percent in December 2022.

“Rather than look at other expenditure regimes and insulate basic education against austerity measures under the IMF budget, the finance ministry chose to sacrifice basic education instead,” he stated.

He suggested that about 40 percent of total GETfund accruals should be allocated to retool basic schools with adequate infrastructure and maintain the recommended class size for effective teaching and learning.

He said analysis of the 2023 budget and the medium-term budget under the IMF bailout showed an allocation of GHC969 million for 2023 and 2024.

Mr. Kovey emphasized that the only way out of Ghana’s indebtedness was investment in basic and secondary education, and countries like Germany, Canada, and Asian countries prioritised education over any other sector.

He suggested the reintroduction of agriculture as a vocation at the basic education level to provide farming skills for our young ones to venture into agriculture right after school.