E-Paper
Supplementary nutrition for midday meal: 1.4 lakh govt school students in two Punjab districts to get bananas
The development came after the MHRD expressed concern over supplementary nutrition not being provided over the last academic year
Moga Students in government schools of ‘Aspirational Districts’ of Moga and Ferozepur will get supplementary nutrition of bananas under the Mid-Day-Meal scheme in this academic session. In a recent meeting with the Programme Approval Board-Mid Day Meal (PAB-MDM), the union ministry has given its nod to the decision. The meeting was held through video conferencing to consider the annual work plan and the budget for 2021-22.
The Punjab education department had proposed to provide bananas to around 1.43 lakh students in Moga and Ferozepur districts at the cost of ₹5 per child. Each student will get one banana for 74 days. The expenditure will be met from funds available with the state, which includes the Centre’s assistance of ₹3.15 crore and state’s share of ₹2.1 crore, minutes of the meeting say; HT has a copy.
The development came after the MHRD expressed concern over supplementary nutrition not being provided over the last academic year. The minutes read, “The PAB observed that state did not even submit the proposal for supplementary nutrition under flexi-fund component, as was committed by them in the PAB meeting of 2020-21. The PAB advised the state to explore the feasibility of providing supplementary nutrition to children, especially in aspirational districts and districts with high prevalence of malnutrition.”
Krishan Kumar, secretary education department; Inderpal Singh Malhotra, assistant project director (MDM) and Prabhcharan Singh, general manager, MDM were present in the meeting. Malhotra said, “We had submitted a proposal to provide milk or bananas as supplementary food to raise the nutritional value of the MDM.”
