The mid-day meal scheme for poor children has come to a halt in nearly 70% of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) schools for the past three months.
The mid-day meal scheme for poor children has come to a halt in nearly 70% of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) schools for the past three months.
A majority of nearly two lakh poor students in the city’s civic schools have been deprived of their mid-day meals due to the failure of the state government to provide rice to women self-help groups (SHG) for preparing the meals.
Nearly two lakh students in Pune’s 274 municipal schools benefit from the mid-day meals prepared by 160 SHGs under the consortium of Savitri Small Savings Group. The free meals are a major reason for poor students attending school across the country.
The SHGs are supplied free rice by the Maharashtra State Cooperative Marketing Federation Ltd and children are served rice and khichadi on alternate days. The scheme’s incharge, Jaishree Dhobale, confirmed that the scheme has come to a halt in more than 70% municipal schools in Pune.
“In the last three years this is the first time that we are facing this problem. It was decided last September that the federation would supply rice to the SHGs in the schools itself. Before that, we used to collect the rice from ration shops in our area. We have been facing this problem from the time the federation took over,” she said.
Expressing a similar view, Seema Rangane, superintendent of the PMC school board’s mid-day meal scheme, said, “We have observed that since day one there were issues with the distribution of rice. On our part we have written to the zilla parishad education officer and the state education department to draw their attention to the problem. Hopefully, we will be able to solve the problem soon,” she said.
When contacted by DNA, federation officials blamed poor coordination among the Food Corporation of India godowns for the failure to provide rice on time.
Requesting anonymity, a senior official said, “We used to distribute rice from the Koregaon Park godown. However, the stocks got over a few months ago. In order to tide over the shortage, we have written to the Phursungi godown and hopefully we will be able to start the supply of rice soon.”
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