Expressing unhappiness over the cost of mid-day meals fixed at Rs 3.11 and Rs 4.65 for primary and upper primary schools respectively, a parliamentary panel has directed the Government to revise the price in realistic terms to avoid recurrence of tragedy like Bihar where 21 schoolchildren died after consuming mid-day meal.
“The fact remains that nowadays a bottle of drinking water in the country costs not less than Rs 10 and on the other hand a sum of Rs 3.11 or Rs 4.65 is allocated to serve the mid-day meal with specified calorie value to students in schools,” the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Empowerment of Women lamented.
“The committee, therefore, strongly recommended that the per unit cost of mid-day meal being served in schools should be worked out and fixed in realistic basis let the recent incident of tragic death of school students in Bihar after consuming mid-day meal might recur at other places.”
In its report on the ‘Assessment of Educational Status of Women with Special Reference to the Girl Child’ submitted in Parliament recently, the panel asked the Government to regularly review the implementation of the scheme in terms of periodic revision of per unit cost, calorie content and mode of preparation of mid-day meals in schools.
The Department of School Education and literacy of the Human Resource Development Ministry has provided for an elaborate mechanism for monitoring and supervision of the scheme at block, district, State and Central levels, the panel pointed out.
However to its dismay, the committee noted that the committees constituted for the purpose were not taking their task seriously otherwise Bihar incident would not have taken place.
Therefore, the panel, headed by Rajkumar Ratna Singh, strongly recommended that there must be a continuous and serious monitoring by these committees to ensure the foolproof implementation of the scheme in future. It also wants that accountability may be fixed on monitoring agencies to ensure that they take their work seriously.
Mid-day meal scheme is benefiting 10.44 crore children in 12.12 lakh schools in the country. It has helped in preventing classroom hunger, promoting school participation, fostering social equality and enhanced gender equity thereby facilitating overall healthy growth of children. A sum of Rs 9,901 crore was spent on the scheme in 2011-12 and is now pegged at Rs 13,215 crore for 2013-14.