GUWAHATI: A few days back the state was rocked by protests of midday meal cooks who were angry about the government’s decision to outsource the midday meal in Assam’s government schools to some NGOs. There were numerous incidents in which it was reported widely in the media that the food provided by the NGOs was of poor quality.
The government then ordered an inquiry into the supply of midday meals by the NGOs who operated centralized kitchens. The government had also put on hold the functioning of these centralised kitchen in the entire state.
On Friday, Assam Education Minister Siddhartha Bhattacharya went on a surprise visit to Dibrugarh’s Barbari Prathamik Vidyalay to enquire about the condition of midday meal scheme in the school. The meal was provided by the regular cooks in coordination with the school authorities.
At the school’s kitchen, the minister was aghast to see the pathetic condition in which the food was prepared for the students. When the minister wanted to know the protein vegetables included in the lentils gravy he was told about soya bean chunks and pumpkins. Much to the surprise of Bhattacharya he could find a few pieces of red pumpkin but no soyabean chunks. Also, he could figure out that the vegetables used were not of fresh quality.
The education minister then inspected the rice bags bought for the school and checked other official bills used for midday meal scheme. According to the norms there must be around 3 quintals of rice left with the school with just eight days remaining in this month. But to the minister’s surprise around 22 quintal of rice was still left in the kitchen.
Siddhartha Bhattacharya found no connection between the balance sheet and budget approved for the school under midday school meal. Also, food items worth Rs. 57 thousand for midday meal were getting wasted.
The education minister gave his piece of mind to the school authorities and the officials for such tardy implementation of the scheme. He later visited one more school where cockroaches welcomed him in the food storage area.
Addressing the media Siddhartha Bhattacharya stated, “The budget that was allotted to 21 schools in this area has been used in a haphazard manner. There is too much food left and it the servings to the students are very less. According to the midday meal scheme, each school is allotted 21 to 23 quintals of rice each month. More than half of this month has passed, yet the school is left with 21 quintals of rice. This is definitely suspicious and must be investigated.”
