E-Paper
Odisha Lokayukta seeks report on sub-standard food served to Malkangiri students
Twenty students from Malkangiri walked 20 km on Saturday to meet the district collector to complain about embezzlement of rice and poor quality food at their hostel
The Odisha Lokayukta on Wednesday asked the Malkangiri district officials to submit a report within six weeks on a complaint filed by the inmates of a residential school run by the state ST&ST department about the sub-standard food being served in their hostel.
On Saturday, 20 inmates of Maribeda Ashram school in Korukonda block of Malkangiri district run by the Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste (ST&SC) development department, walked 20 km to meet the district collector to complain about embezzlement of rice and poor quality food at their hostel.
As they could not meet the collector, they went to district welfare officer Krupa Sindhu Behera and lodged a complaint against their teachers for providing sub-standard food.
The Lokayukta said the tribal students appear to be the victims of malpractice with genuine grievances on the condition in the hostel and issued notices to the Malkangiri collector, project administrator, Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA), district welfare officer and the headmaster of the Maribada Ashram School. They have been asked to submit their reply within six weeks.
The students alleged that the hostel superintendent was involved in siphoning off rice meant for the hostel boarders and they were served inferior quality rice instead. Besides, he engaged the students in manual jobs like cleaning of drains besides his personal and domestic work, they alleged.
Last week, all the 182 inmates of an ashram school in Malkangiri’s Podia block had left their hostel after two students of Class 7 and 8 succumbed to a mysterious disease. Health officials said the unhygienic conditions at the hostel and the consumption of rice infected with fungus were the reasons behind the deaths.
Ashram schools are state-run residential schools that provide up to secondary education to boys and girls who belong to the Scheduled Tribes. There are more than 760 Ashram schools functioning in Odisha under the ST & SC development department. Tribals constitute nearly 23% of Odisha’s 42 million population. Of them, 52.24% are literate while literacy among other social groups is 72.87 per cent.
In 2081-19, an evaluation of functioning of Ashram schools in the state by Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Research and Training Institute found that their infrastructure was inadequate.
The survey done in 27 schools in 6 districts found that though 78% of the schools had facility of inverter and solar lights they were not being utilised regularly due to maintenance cost. It found that just about 67 % had boundary walls. In 48 per cent of the schools, the children had to have their lunch and dinner in hostel or on school corridors as there was no dining room.
