Mr Ofori-Atta said this in his mid-year fiscal policy review on the 2018 budget statement in Accra on Thursday. He said in consonance with the policy to reinstate the nursing trainee allowances, an amount of GH¢311,988,400.00 was allocated in the 2018 budget to pay the allowances of 68,000 trainee nurses for the 2017/2018 and first semester of the 2018/2019 academic year.

“As at end June 2018, GH¢122,400,000.00 has been released to pay the allowances of 51,000 beneficiary trainees,” he said.  The Minister said the sum of GH¢177,511,600.00 was allocated for the payment of allowances to 49,032 teacher trainees in the 41 colleges of education across the country, out of which GH¢78,451,200.00, representing 44 percent, was released to pay for the allowances for the second semester.

He said the National School Feeding Programme had engaged 8,000 new caterers and introduced new caterer contracting guidelines, which required caterers to purchase food items from local farmers and fishermen. A total of 2,174,000 kindergarten and primary school pupils compared with the 1,671,777 pupils recorded in 2017, are now benefiting from the programme making the difference of 501,536.

The Programme was allocated GH¢423,795,500.00, out of which GH¢229,310,000.00, representing 54.11 per cent had been released. Mr Ofori-Atta said a sum of GH¢168,369,800.00 was allocated for implementation of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme, out of which GH¢78,293,067.00, representing 46.5 per cent had been released for the first and second quarters of the year.

He said to date, a total of 550,000 LEAP beneficiaries have been registered unto the NHIS or have their expired cards renewed. Three (3) successive bi-monthly payments have been made to 213,044 households nationwide from the beginning of the year.