Govt takes kitchen-shed stock

Statesman News Service

MALDA, June 19: The state government has asked all districts to prepare a list of primary schools which do not have a kitchen shed for mid-day meal preparation and distribution, in order to prepare a report for the Union human resources development ministry. The mid-day meal programme had been introduced under the Sarbo Shiksha Abhijan project, with a view to reducing the dropout rate. The state government wants to assess the situation to ensure the distribution of cooked food to primary school students, a district official said. Instead of distributing rice to primary school students, as was the practice earlier, the district administration here is trying to provide cooked food to students. The project has already been introduced in most primary schools here, but a lack of kitchen sheds has forced the members of the women’s wing of self-help groups, assigned to the cooking and distribution of the food, to use classrooms to carry out the job. Primary school authorities who do not have sufficient number of teachers, are facing problems in executing the mid-day meal programme as well. Earlier, the district administration had faced irregularities in the distribution of the mid-day meal due to unscrupulous distributors and alleged negligence by the government officials concerned. The administration had lodged an FIR against two distributors for mis-utilising the rice meant for the mid-day meal project. This had hampered the programme in Kaliachak and Ratua blocks, the additional district magistrate informed.