Midday meal:Most schools misusing funds

SHILLONG, MAY 4:  Even as the union and state governments have pumped in Rs 81.55 crore into the mid day meal scheme in Meghalaya during the last financial years, schools implementing this particular scheme have either diverted the funds and food grains or are not implementing it at all with the state’s education department’s inability to vigorously monitor its implementation because of shortage of manpower.

The tardy rate of implementation of the mid day meal scheme in many of the schools in Meghalaya have denied many students of upper and lower primary schools of the free meal they were supposed to get from their respective school.

During the 2014-15 financial years, the Meghalaya government had approved 11,227 schools in the state for the “mid day meal scheme.” Government managed schools, adhoc and deficit schools qualified for the “Midday Meal Scheme.” Under the scheme, approximately 5.14 lakhs school children are supposed to get free mid day meal in schools.

Notwithstanding the almost non implementation of the “Midday meal” scheme in many schools in the state, the state education department has placed a projection of Rs 107.98 crore as expenditure for the implementation of the midday meal scheme for 2015-16 financial years.

Midday meal scheme state nodal officer Akash Deep, however, said that the department is doing all it can to monitor the implementation of this particular scheme with a skeletal manpower.

Akash Deep informed that the state does not have dedicated staff to oversee implementation of the midday meal scheme in the state and monitoring are done by staff who are already overburden with some other works.

Akash Deep said, “The monitoring is done at different level from the districts to the block levels by officials who are already overburdened by other responsibilities.” He revealed that the officials monitoring the implementation of the midday meal scheme have been directed to monitor at least ten schools in their areas and report.

Appallingly, none of the monitoring teams of the education department in the district and block levels have reported to the state nodal officer either of the tardy or complete non-implementation of the “midday meal scheme” in schools though it is an open secret that primary and upper primary school students do not get the “free food” provided by the government.

The government provides the food grains like rice through the deputy commissioner (supply) to the schools and for other items like dal, vegetables, eatable oil, cooking cost and cook’s salary of Rs 1000 are given in cash.

Schools that are implementing the “Midday Meal Scheme” are supposed to display the meal that is being served daily in a board. However, none of the schools follow this direction as many of these schools do not serve the midday meal but divert the food items and misuse the money given to them.

A teacher-who does not want to be identified- from one of the city schools informed that the school he teaches do not provide the midday meal to the students though it is one of the beneficiaries of the “Midday Meal” scheme. He said, “The rice that the school gets is diverted to the school hostel, the hostel cook is given the Rs 1000 under the scheme and the money given to buy other food items is apparently goes missing.”

The “Midday Meal” story is similar in other schools too as primary and upper primary school students said they either do not get the food or are rarely provided by the school.

But Akash Deep said that he has not received any such reports from any of the officers. He, however, assured that soon the state will have dedicated teams whose jobs will be to monitor the implementation of the “Midday meal scheme” in the schools.

Akash Deep has also assured that action will be taken against any school that fails to provide meal under the “Midday meal scheme” and have requested to concerned citizens to report such cases to him.- By Our Reporter