The education department of the State Government, it is learnt, has decided to provide dry ration for the vacation period to the parents of the schoolchildren instead of cooking and serving the Mid-Day Meals within the schools.
The schoolchildren are to be served food on all days in the schools, including holidays, as per the guidelines of the Mid-Day Meals (MDM) scheme.
And the Union Government provides the budget for the meals served during the vacations. About 8 lakh students in 17,742 Government schools avail themselves of the facility in Uttarakhand.
It is learnt that the education department had planned to cook the MDM in the schools itself during the vacation and serve the children like on normal school days but it retracted fearing opposition from the teachers who, as also the Bhojan Matas (cooks), it thought, may not turn up in the schools just for managing the MDM during the vacation.
The department has also plan to provide the fuel cost of preparing the meals to the parents. However, the whole idea to provide ration and cooking cost to each parent seems impractical.
It is worth mentioning here that the Government provides a measly sum of Rs3.86 per meal for a student of primary school and Rs5.78 for a meal of student of upper primary school.
A student meal has specific amount of food grain, pulses, vegetable and cooking oil and given the meager budget the teachers barely manage to cook the meals in the schools as food is cooked in large quantity.
“The idea of providing MDM to the students during vacations is not practical. During the vacations most of the students are not available,” said one of the teachers. “How could we provide ration, vegetable and oil to parents of individual childrenIJ”asked another teacher.
The parents too are not happy at the idea of receiving dry ration.
One parent suggested that the department should hand over the task of MDM to village pradhans and the Bhojan Matas should be asked to cook the meals during summer vacation. He said that by this arrangement teachers would not have to visit the schools during vacation.
The Joint Director of MDM, PK Bisht, said that the meals would be provided to the students for 30 days during the vacation. He said that an additional budget of Rs 11 cr would be required for the MDM during this period and that the Union Government would bear this burden.