Mid-day meals elude Delhi kids, finds CAG report

Food felony

Rs 116 crore grant was allocated to feed school children.
Meals were short supplied to 15 schools.
Meals were denied to children from lower sections of the society for 88 days in a school year of 200 days.

The government’s mid-day meal scheme for school children has failed to curb drop-outs in Delhi as most of the Rs 116 crore grant allocated for feeding nutritious meals to them attracted only the suppliers and officials.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has revealed the nexus between unauthorized contractors of cooked meals and the authorities while noting that as many as 74,000 eligible children were never registered for even irregular serving of 300 grams of cooked ‘nutritious’ meals.

UNICEF’s country representative in India Cecilio Adorna has also expressed concern over the deaths of about 4,000 children in India due to malnutrition. “There is a silent emergency around children in India,” Adorna said.

On its part, CAG report says that the government didn’t supply mid-day meals on 50 per cent days of the school last year. The centrally located New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) that covers the entire political and executive leadership of the country denied that the afternoon meals to children hailing from vulnerable sections of the society for 88 days in a school year of 200 days.

In addition, even the meager meal packets were short supplied in 36 schools where children had to contend with 240 grams of filling.

In another 205 schools, it was found that meals were short supplied in 15 schools where each child was served with 52 grams of ill-fortified servings.

Though the civic authorities have sought to make stringent laws for eatable shops and street food vendors, it hasn’t applied the same norm for the suppliers of mid-day meals.
CAG also said “There remained every possibility of over-payment to the contractors and denial of the prescribed quantity of meals to the children.”

It was found that suppliers, of which many of them were NGOs, didn’t even maintain the minimum standards of hygiene. Also, they did not possess the requisite licenses to run the catering shops. They supplied meals in unsealed containers thus raising the possibility of “contamination, adulteration or pilferage during the transportation of the meals”.

Meals were also returned on one to five days by 10 per cent of government schools, on one to 15 days by 6.66 per cent of MCD schools and on one to 17 days by 21 per cent of NDMC schools. However, the authorities didn’t take action against them for supplying sub-standard food.

Though the government’s reluctance in taking action against suppliers is evident, it is felt that the Supreme Court could initiate action against the civic authorities for committing a variety of lapses like denying regular fortified and hygienic food to school children studying in government schools up to fifth standard.

Much before he was elevated as the Chief Justice of India, Justice KG Balakrishnan had directed all the state governments and Centre to provide mid-day meals containing adequate calories and protein to all the school children.

It was felt that serving foods to the malnourished and hungry children could serve two purposes: they would attend the schools regularly and also have a healthy diet.