With an aim to add more nutrition in the food provided to about 8 lakh students of Government schools under the Mid-Day Meal (MDM) scheme, the education department is planning to include eggs and fresh fruits in the menu.
In its recent meeting the State level Project management committee for MDM, a proposal to add these food items in the scheme was made to the Government of Uttarakhand. The Joint Director (JD), MDM, P K Bisht accepted that the proposal is sent to the government. He said that it is planned to provide high nutritional value foods like eggs, fruits and Gur Papadi once a week to the students under MDM. Bisht informed that a budget of `5 per student per week would be provided to the schools if the proposal is accepted. The State Government would have to bear an additional cost of `17 Crore if its gives its clearance to the plan. The MDM is provided to about 8 lakh students in 17742 Government schools of the State.
Under the MDM the schools are supposed to provide meals at the rate of `3.76 per day per child in primary schools and `5.64 in Upper Primary schools. The Union government and state government bear the cost of MDM in the ratio of 75: 25.
The schools are provided food grains (rice and wheat) while they had to manage other food items on their own from the budget provided. The teachers are given responsibility for managing MDM in their schools. Bhojan Matas are employed in the schools to prepare the meal for the students.
Apart from luring students to the schools, increase enrollments and reduce caste based discriminations the major objective of the scheme is to provide food having requisite calories and protein content to the students.
Teachers who are responsible to provide MDM and keep its record are not too enthusiastic on the idea of providing eggs or fruits. “ The concept is good but the implementation part is replete with problems. Many students are vegetarians and some children even have allergy towards eggs. We are already over burdened with keeping records and this is bound to increase our load,’’ said one teacher posted in Beeronkhal block of Pauri district.