By Saio Marrah
The 2021 Performance Audit Report published last month has highlighted a number of challenges affecting the successful implementation of the School Feeding Project (SEP), noting that only 37 percent of the 100 percent targeted by the Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) has been achieved.
“Analysis of documents submitted by the School Feeding Secretariat disclosed that the GoSL has still not been able to meet its target of feeding 100% of children in pre-primary and primary government and government-assisted schools,” it reads.
It said: “Although there has been a steady increase in the percentage of children benefiting from the SFP since 2019, as at 2021, only 37% of school children nationwide benefitted from the SFP.”
The report indicated lapses in the management of the feeding by the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, such as low commitment on the part of the government towards the intervention, vulnerable schools not registered for the SFP, poor quality and insufficiency of food distributed, inconsistency in the timing of food distribution, lack of proper monitoring of the Project and no diversification of meal sauces, that it said have all hindered achieving the objectives of the SFP.
The audit also revealed that 70% of the government’s financial obligations to implementing partners of the Programme has not been met, leading partners to seek loans from their head offices to fund the SFP.
However, the report stated that much has not been done by the School Feeding Secretariat to address the challenges, noting that if they are not addressed promptly, it will affect the vision of the Free Quality School Education Pprogramme which is the flagship programme of the government.
The Auditors therefore recommended that the Inter-Ministerial Committee in collaboration with key stakeholders should carry out a detailed assessment of the financial, infrastructural, human, and material needs of the national school feeding programme so as to ensure resources are adequate to achieve the objective of the school feeding programme.
It was also recommended that the Coordinator of the SFP should ensure that the regional offices are enhanced for the monitoring of food items distributed by implementing partners in order to assess the quality of food supplied before approval for distribution to schools, and that a strategy be mapped out that could highlight other means of sustainable funding to enable the government fulfil its financial obligations. Implementing partners were urged to adopt a system that will ensure that food is supplied before the start of the school year and should be enough to last for the school term. The audit report was tabled in Parliament last week.
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