Bolgatanga,04 Oct,GNA - Senior High Schools (SHSs) in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions are finding it difficult to run their academic programmes because they have not yet had their feeding grants for this academic year.

This was brought to light when the Northern Patriots in Research and Advocacy (NORPRA), a civil society Organization working to promote social equality and justice, met and appealed to the Upper East Regional Minister, Mr. Mark Woyongo, on Friday to intervene to help solve the problem. Briefing the Minister, Mr. Bismark Ayorogo, President of NORPRA, said it had been established that most of the heads of the institutions had to task students to pay their school fees so that it could be used to help feed them.

As a result, most students who could not pay their school fees are still at home pending the disbursement of the school feeding grants. The President of NORPRA appealed to the Minister to intervene to solve the problem to enable the students return to school for academic work and stressed that the situation had become a perenial problem that needed to be addressed once and for all.

Mr. Woyongo said most of the schools owed food contractors a lot of money and cited the Bolgatanga Technical School in the Region as owing a high of three million Ghana cedis.

He indicated that he had directed the District Director of Education to investigate the matter and to find a way of solving the problem adding that because most of the schools were in debt, food contractors were not interested in supplying food items to them on credit. He entreated parents not to shirk their responsibilities of paying their children's school fees and regretted that instead of spending on the education of their children, some parents spent their money on alcoholic beverages.

He stated that he would liaise with his colleague Ministers in the Northern and Upper West Regions to make a special case to the government since the area was the most deprived.

He stressed the need for Government to institute a special scholarship scheme for students in the North. He noted that education was one of the major tools that could help close the gap of development between the North and the South. He pointed out that he would contact the Minister of Education on the issue to ensure that the schools in the area received their feeding grants in time to facilitate academic work.