Minority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin has refuted claims that the government left unpaid arrears to school feeding caterers before exiting office.
According to him, any comments to that effect are unfounded.
“Government paid all caterers, and I want you to quote me – the last term. It’s only this term, which has just begun, that government owes because the term will have to end,” he said on Monday.
This rebuttal came in response to comments made by Finance Minister-designate Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson during his vetting before Parliament’s Appointments Committee.
Dr. Ato Forson had criticised the treatment of school feeding caterers, describing their payment situation as “woefully inadequate.”
He also cited an instance on December 30, 2024, when scores of caterers under the School Feeding Programme staged a protest at the Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Protection demanding payment of arrears for two academic terms covering 2023 and 2024.
The caterers, who traveled from various parts of the country, claim that despite assurances from the Controller and Accountant General’s Department that funds have been disbursed to the Ministry, they have yet to receive payment.
According to the Finance Minister-nominee, this speaks volumes of how the erstwhile NPP administration neglected the caterer’s plight.
However, Mr Afenyo-Markin strongly disagreed with these assertions, insisting that the previous administration, led by the New Patriotic Party (NPP), cleared all outstanding debts to caterers before leaving office.
“But I want you to know that I am aware that government paid all outstanding to caterers. The NPP government, at the time of leaving office, had paid every single caterer,” Mr Afenyo-Markin said during the vetting session.
Mr Afenyo-Markin subsequently sought to provide more clarity to his assertion with regard to the said payments as of December 31, 2024.”I learned something from Dr Forson. I’m not an economist. Mine is law, but we are learning. He once said, there’s a difference between releases and payments. So government will release to Controller, and then Controller would have to effect the payment. So you can talk about actual payment, when you are in receipt of your payment, Ato correct? Very well. So I would want to use that to clarify an earlier point that I made from the School Feeding Secretariat that government released the entire 72 days owed the caterers to Controller and the actual payment received out of those release letters – the letter that goes to a controller – payment received by the caterers was for 42 days, and that the 32 days outstanding is yet to be received by the caterers. So I just wanted that on record and that becomes your first responsibility to ensure that the controller complies with the releases.”
