Government has started paying caterers under the school feeding programme via the e-zwich system of payment.
This government maintains it is to ensure transparency and dispatch in the payment of the service providers, and will also ensure a proper audit trail and cut back on the human interface to reduce the incidence of malfeasance.
The Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS), together with banks, has been enrolling caterers who do not have the biometric smart card onto the e-zwich platform.
Consequently, a significant number of caterers have so far received payments on their e-zwich cards.
Payments through the e-zwich platform are swift and instant, taking away the long and, sometimes, cumbersome payment procedure of the past.
Business Development Manager at GhIPSS, Ms Mary Dei-Sarpong, who confirmed payment of the caterers, urged the recipients to also use their cards for other transactions such as money transfer and payment for goods and services on the gh-link hybrid Point of Sales terminals.
“The e-zwich card enables you to enter any bank at all and get service, or use the POS or even e-zwich-compliant ATMs; this convenience and the security feature makes it an exciting experience for these caterers and users of the card”, she explained.
President John Mahama, during the opening of a two-day conference on National Anti-corruption Action Plan in Accra last year, said various government institutions were going to commence the use of the e-zwich platform for payments. This, he stated, was to be part of efforts to fight corruption.
Authorities at GhIPSS say they are delighted over the fact that not long after the President’s statement, caterers under the school feeding programme are being paid electronically using the e-zwich biometric smart card and mobile money platforms.
This follows the payment of all National Service personnel on their e-zwich card, which began in December last year.
The School Feeding Programme began in late 2005 with 10 pilot schools, drawn from each region of the country.
By August 2006, it had been expanded to 200 schools covering 69,000 pupils in all 138 districts.
However, currently, over 1.7 million school children in 4,952 schools are covered.
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