Sir,
12,500 Government Schools in Jammu province are presently serving the mid-day meal to children of weaker section of the society. The scheme initiated in the year 2004 in Jammu and Kashmir is running in a good state but at the cost of teacher’s pocket money. The delay in release of funds from Centre to State and then State to schools is a major problem for teachers-cum-in-charge of the scheme.
Not just delay in funds is the problems for teachers to face but the divided attention between the job of a teacher and a mid-day meal incharge causes a distress among teachers. For proper implementation of mid-day meal on regular basis in schools, sometimes teachers have to buy grocery, LPG, and other food equipment from their own pockets. There is not even a well-furnished kitchen-cum-store in many a school and no standard guidelines are followed for checking the food quality. Though, National Accreditation Board for Laboratories is regulated to check the MDM quality but no such actions are being performed in reality instead teachers themselves taste the food and maintain possible hygienic environment with the help of cook-cum-helpers.
Apart from teachers even cook-cum-helpers are facing problems to drive the scheme as cook’s honorarium is never released on time and the salary they are getting is very low to which they are demanding a hike repeatedly. But nothing has been done so far by the Government to address their issue.
In the era where a man loves money more than anything, just giving away one’s own money for betterment of others is a social deed and that might be the reason behind the stable functioning of the MDM Scheme in Jammu Province beside the fact of improper regulation and delay in funds by Government.
Nevertheless, Government has initiated an ARMS (Automated Reporting and Management System) Portal which provides information to the Government about the total number of students who have food under the MDM Scheme per day per school. It is an online project which verifies the accountability of food served in each school. Such better initiatives by Government can be prove helpful to run the scheme effectively.
Yours etc….
Yakita Somani
Jammu
Follow our WhatsApp channel