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Fund crunch makes mid-day meal tasteless

KORAPUT: Purba Jani, a five-year-old child was looking at his school at Balipadarguda village in Koraput block on Tuesday to know whether it would open for serving the mid-day meal. The school remained closed for the last 15 days due to absence of the two teachers engaged by the Education Department. The school is being run as per their wishes, alleges Mana Jani, a youth from the village.

It does not matter whether the teachers impart education or not, but there is some food in the school for children as a part of the mid-day meal (MDM) programme, says Raghu Jani, another villager. Though there is not much in the meal except some rice and scanty additives, the food given in the school at free of cost is a great relief for parents as they themselves have to struggle hard to meet their ends in a village having virtually no source of income, he adds.

But providing food under the MDM scheme is a difficult task for the SHGs without receiving any funds from the district administration for purchasing additives like oil, salt, firewood and vegetables for the last ten months, says Phulmati Kirsani, president of Chandini SHG of the village.

The situation is not solitarily confined to Balipadarguda alone in the district as the district administration has not released the required amount for the purpose to none of the schools for the mentioned period and the SHGs are forced to manage by borrowing from the nearby shops, sources in the Education Department say. But with credit bills goint high at the village shops and the poor financial condition of the groups, the shops have stopped giving ration on credit in most of the villages.

While the much-advertised scheme of providing eggs in schools is far from the reality, children in many schools are to be satisfied with only a handful of rice.

On enquiry with the officials in the district headquarters at Koraput, it is learnt that the files to get the approval for release of funds are being shifting from one table to the other for finding ways to eliminate any alleged misappropriation of funds at different level.

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