New Delhi: The Bihar government has denied receiving any warning from the Ministry of Human Resource over mid day meals served in schools in the state. The HRD Ministry had reportedly in April 2013 warned the Bihar government over problems faced by the mid day meal scheme in the state. Two reports prepared by independent agencies showed that students and their parents were not happy with the quality of food served at schools in the state.
The reports claimed that the food was cooked and kept in the open and de-worming tablets were not given to students at various schools in Bihar. According to the minutes of the HRD Ministry meeting accessed by CNN-IBN, senior Bihar government officials attended the meeting.
"We had alerted the Bihar government quite a few months back about shortcomings in its food storage. We had expected that the Bihar government would have acted on the recommendations," HRD Minister Pallam Raju said while admitting that there has been a failure on the part of the Nitish Kumar government in ensuring hygienic mid day meals for students across the state.
"We are setting up a central committee to look into the aspects of quality, hygiene and food storage across the country. We will be reviewing the mid day meal procedure across the country," he added.
The HRD Minister said that the central committee will meet from time to time and will also give guidelines to the government on how to improve the scheme. "The central committee will consist of members from all central departments like food, public distribution, health, women and child development, NGO's and civil society," he said.
The post-mortem reports on children, who died after eating a mid day meal in Chhapra in Bihar, confirmed that insecticide was either in the food or cooking oil, a doctor said on Thursday. The toll rose to 23 on Thursday after the death of one more child.
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