NGO TO SUPPLY FOOD ITEMS TO HIGH SCHOOLS ON CREDIT (PAGE 29)

STORY: Zakaria Alhassan, Tamale

A Tamale-based NGO, the Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD), has offered to supply food items to Senior High Schools in the metropolis on credit to enable the schools re-open for academic work.
According to the organisation, it had critically assessed the situation and was convinced that it had the capacity to supply very reliable foodstuff on credit basis to the schools until such a time that the feeding grant was released by the Scholarship Secretariat.
‘‘CARD has the capacity to supply a range of foodstuff including maize, rice, cowpea, cooking oil, herrings to arrest the situation to enable the schools here to re-open as soon as possible,’’ Mr Mustapha Mas-ud, who is co-ordinator of micro-finance of CARD, said.
The co-ordinator further intimated that ‘‘we have enough stock of farm produce for supply on very reasonable terms of payment”.
He explained that his outfit had been engaged in farm produce banking programme for the past 10 years and that it currently supplied various grain products to some food vendors and processors in the metropolis on credit.
Mr Mas-ud observed that their intervention could be a relief at a time that most food suppliers were overburdened and distressed and were therefore either unwilling or unable to supply any more foodstuffs because of the huge monies owed them by the schools.
‘‘It is also our firm believe that we can extend the credit facilities to cover other government-assisted schools in the various districts in the north that have boarding facilities,’’ he intimated.
The co-ordinator disclosed that his organisation had written to the schools concerned to contact it for deliberations and terms of payments.
There has been a recurrent delay in the release of feeding grants to boarding schools in the three northern regions over the years. At the moment, students of Senior High Schools in the three regions are still at home as a result of the inability of the scholarship secretariat to release the grant.