An 8-year-old girl from Katte Hunasuru village in Heggadadevana Kote taluk of Mysore district on Friday succumbed to the burn injuries she received after accidentally falling into a cauldron containing hot sambar at her school two days earlier.
“Apoorva belonged to a family of daily-wage earners and was studying in Class II,” Mysore zilla panchayat CEO G Satyavani told DNA.
“That day, the school management had for some reason deviated from the norms of [distributing] mid-day meals and made the children stand in a queue with their plates in the cooking area, just inches away from the huge cauldrons filled to the brim with boiling sambar. I have gathered that not even one staff member was monitoring the children’s movement while the food was being served. I have suspended the headmaster, K Srinivas, and dismissed the cooks and other helpers who were found to be at fault for allowing the children to come near the hot cauldrons.”
The zilla panchayat has now made new safety guidelines to be followed by schools while dispensing mid-day meals to students.
“The cooking area will be a prohibited zone for everybody except the personnel who prepare the food,” said Satyavati. “The food will be kept under the surveillance of a senior teacher or the head cook till it is given out to the students.”
The food will have to be poured into small steel vessels, taken to where the children are seated and then served. “The headmaster or the senior-most teacher, along with one or two helpers from the lower ranks of the staff, should supervise the dispensation of the food safely to the children,” said Satyavati.
Being in a rural and backward area, the attendance at Apoorva’s school had risen after the introduction of the mid-day meal scheme.
