Mid-day
meal scheme suspended
Sandesh Prabhudesai
13 February 2003
Goa
has suspended its mid-day meal scheme within a week, following
complaints of primary school students vomiting and falling
sick.
The scheme would be now implemented from the next academic
year, except experimenting with it one remote taluka of Sattari.
Chief minister Manohar Parrikar, in spite of denying the
fact initially, had to later suspend it as the opposition
parties made it an issue to target him during the ongoing
week-long Assembly session.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party legislators also faced
wrath of the general public, who got furious for supplying
food packets with fungus to their schoolgoing children in
Bicholim, another remote taluka.
Parrikar had announced the scheme in the last budget, following
directive by the Supreme Court to implement the scheme of
supplying cooked food to primary schools in all the states.
However, Goa decided not to use the poor quality rice from
the centre since no primary school here is run for the full
day. It was thus replaced with food packets to be supplied
during interval, while filing an affidavit before the court
in this regard.
The food packet menu contained groundnut chikki, biscuits,
sweet bread, vegetarian cake, chivda and basen laddu. Teachers,
when supplied, however found fungus on the cake and bread,
as the supply was made one day later.
Fortunately, no cases of serious illness were reported as
most of the teachers decided not to supply the food packets
to the students while alert parents also instructed the children
not to consume it, as soon as the news broke out.
When the issue was raised in the House, members from both
the treasury and the opposition benches however agreed that
the scheme should continue as most of the children go to school
with empty stomach and sometimes even faint down due to hunger.
Parrikar agreed to set up a committee for proper monitoring
of the food quality as well as the supply network, while replacing
fast perishable items like sweet bread and cake with other
nutritive items, which will have a week-long shelf life.
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