Indore, June 19: The free meal programme, which has been started for the benefit of around 12 crore school kids, has taken the form of a health risk as the cases of dead animals in mid-day meal are increasing day by day.
The new case in the list is from Madhya Pradesh where a lizard found on Wednesday, in the lunch served to pupils at a primary government school at Neelkanth colony in Indore district.
The school help Kamla Bai spot the lizard in the food and at once informed Principal Badrinarayan Rathore, who stopped the food from being distributed to kids and informed the NGO.
Nandi Foundation distributed the mid-day meal to the school.
It should be noted that Nandi Foundation was given the task of providing the midday meals to 348 primary schools and 184 middle schools of the state.
But since its implementation, the scheme has been in the attention more for the unhealthy meals being supplied to the pupils and cases of lizards, cockroaches and frogs being found in the served food.
“This is not the first case where poor quality food has been supplied. In the past, cockroaches have been found in the meal served by the Nandi Foundation, but complaints against it have failed to yield any results,” Mr. Rathore said.
On May 28, a frog was found from mid-day meal in the state capital.
A few weeks back, a piece of angle-iron was found in the meal being served at the Government Obaidia High School.
Collector Rakesh Srivastava said Additional Commissioner (Municipal Corporation) Awdhesh Sharma will investigate the whole matter and the enquiry would be finished within one or two days.
Mr. Srivastava said that the incident looked to be someone’s misbehavior.
He expressed fears that lizard might be in the vessel of the school from before, as the Nandi Foundation had distributed mid-day meals in other schools too.
—–Agencies