The Member of Parliament for the Binduri Constituency in the Upper East Region, Abanga Abdullai, has asked the caterer providing food for students of the Binduri Community Day Senior High School to report back to duty as the government is at its final stage of releasing all the monies owed.
According to the MP, follow-ups have been made to various authorities in charge of processing her necessary documents, and much assurance has been given to that effect.
“I got informed of the matter by the District Education Director a day ago, and I must say that I’m following it up. In fact, I contacted those in charge of the school feeding program at the national level, and they assured me that her documents have been processed and funds will be released to her soon. So, I will call on her to report back to duty come Monday so that effective teaching and learning can bounce back again”, he stressed.
On July 11, 2023, the first- and second-year students of Binduri Community Day Senior High staged a protest and abandoned school activities over the failure of the school caterer to provide them with food. According to the students, the caterer stopped preparing lunch for them for close to two months and, as a result, decided to boycott academic activities.
However, the caterer at the center, according to the school authorities, clarified that the government was owing her close to two years of nonpayment of arrears.
But speaking on the issue on the Daybreak Upper East Show on A1 Radio, the MP noted that he could not fathom the actions of the students and why they ought to boycott school activities because of lunch.
He thought, “I’m totally surprised by their actions. In the first place, the students knew that the school was a day school and would only be provided with one meal. And if that meal is not coming just for a few days, then the best way for them is to protest and boycott school activities. Come on, there is something more to it than the meal. Tell me, if you can self-feed yourself for morning and evening for all this time and just a few days that the caterer couldn’t prepare that hot meal for you, then you think boycotting school activities is the best way, and that is not good thinking because your colleagues elsewhere are learning and you are here losing a lot. So, I plead with the students to go back to the classrooms; it will do them good.”
He therefore appealed to political actors in the region to desist from using the issue to gain “cheap” political points.
