KARIMNAGAR (Telengana): Thanks to the escalation of prices, the serving of nutritious egg in the mid-day meal scheme is becoming a distant dream in majority of the government schools in the district.
Besides, with the steep increase of prices of pulses such as red gram and sky-rocketing prices of the vegetables due to the prevailing drought conditions, students of various government schools are unable to get the nutritious food promised by the State government under the scheme.
Against the serving of egg twice in a week, the mid-day meal workers are now providing it only once in a week. On occasions, mid-day meal workers have stopped providing eggs and are serving only bananas as it not viable for them with the given commission.
With the prices of red gram and green gram soaring high, workers are forced to serve dal prepared with Bengal gram, which is available at a cheaper price.
Similarly, workers are unable to provide different varieties of vegetables due to escalation of prices, and they are forced to serve cheaply available vegetables such as cucumber, potatoes etc.
“How can we serve eggs twice in a week as per norms when the cost of each egg is Rs.4.50 paise to Rs. 5?,” questions Lalitha, a mid-day meal worker in the Government High School, Mankammathota, in the town. “The government just provides us rice free of cost. We have to purchase vegetables, oil, ingredients, firewood etc to prepare food at the cost of Rs. 6.64 paise per student,” she says.
The condition of mid-day meal workers serving food in primary schools is even worse.
They are paid only Rs.4.76 paise per student.