HUMAN greed made mid-day meal poisonous: Gogia

Ferozepur, July 19, 2013: The Ferozepur NGOs Coordination Committee, Ferozepur Unit, President Inder Singh Gogia, Vice President Ashok Bajaj, (Retd. ITO), Manjit Singh Dhami and Mangat Ram, in its emergent meeting, paid condolence to the 22 children died in Bihar after consuming the mid-day meal.

Speaking to the mediapersons, Inder Singh Gogia said, “The news about the death of 22 children in two district of Bhiar after consuming mid-day meal and the incident of falling ill of 102 children in Tamilnadu are most tragic incidents. It is felt that a scheme which as primarily started to end undernourishment in children actually ended up claiming their lives”.

Gogia further said, “On 17 July, children were dead in Bihar and on the next day, the students fell ill after the lunch in Madhubani.  These two incidents have exposed the carelessness and negligence on the part of administrative system.  In fact, in our country, there is race of loot in the schemes planned for the welfare of poor and they are performed as stop-gap-arrangements.  It is happening with the mid-day meal scheme everywhere, it may be Bihar, Delhi, Punjab or Maharashtra”.

Ashok Bajaj (Retd. ITO) showing his deep concern over the incident said, “About two year’s back, 61 students fell in Nashik, in 2009, 120 girls also fell ill in Girls School in Delhi.  In the same year, in August, in MP at Sivni, five students become victim and it is crystal clear that the foodgrain supplied for the mid-day meal scheme is siphoned-off by replacing with the sub-standard quality.  In addition, there is no proper check over the storage of foodgrains in the schools and the utensils in which the food is served are kept on the dirty place and they are not properly cleaned.  The teachers being not bothered about the study of the children and likewise they are least worried about the serving of good quality of food to the students”.

While Manjit Singh Dhami an active member of the NGOs Committee shared, “In fact, the idea behind the starting of mid-day meal scheme was to attract the children to join the school.  Initially, the raw-material was given to the schools for cooking of food but on seeing the heavy embezzlements in distributing the grains and the students were being deprived of this mid-day meal facility, in 2002, the court ordered to serve the cooked food to the students.  No doubt, this increased the strength of the students in the schools but there was no end to the game of corrupt elements.  On cropping up of any major incident, the investigation is ordered but there is no action on the reports submitted on this account.  Perhaps, none has so far been penalised for supply of substandard and unhygienic food to the students”.

Gogia said, “It is the children who have paid the price for the ambitious programmes chalked out by the government with much fanfare to serve its political and economic goals. In fact, the human’s greed has made the mid-day meal poisonous. Unless the people have ‘will’ to work honestly for the nation and learn lessons from these tragedies, these will continue to happen regularly in form or the other to leave a question mark on the government schemes”. 

Now the sacrifice made by 22 children is a wake-up call  and the ball is in the court of Nitish Kumar, Chief Minister Bihar, to give due attention,  to get the culprits for serving poisonous food to the children, take initiative to end corruption and bring efficiency in the mid-day meal scheme, Gogia added.