Over Ghc2 million overpaid to school feeding caterers between 2017-2022 – Report

Overpayment of caterers by around GH¢2.3 million was discovered during a performance audit carried out by the Auditor-General on the management of the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP).

The audit was conducted by the Auditor-General at the Ashanti, Eastern, Greater Accra, Upper East, and Western Regional offices of the GSFP National Secretariat from August to October 2022.

2017–2022, inclusive, was the audit’s timeframe.

The fact that the food the cooks were serving was insufficient to keep the students fed during the class period or school day was also discovered.

Almost 4 million students are presently fed by the project, which was started in 2005 and is spread across 216 districts’ worth of public elementary schools.

GH¢274,235.29 payments were wrongly also made to caterers who were not party to the project contract.

Additionally, GH¢831,776.00 that was realised from the sale of the caterer application forms was not retrieved by the feeding program’s national secretariat.

For this reason, the Auditor-General “recommended that the National Coordinator put in place measures to identify and retrieve all outstanding wrongful and overpayments made to caterers as well as the monies realised from the sale of the caterer application forms.”