Panaji (Goa): It’s the step that is certainly going to have an emotional quotient. Goa government has decided to hand over the work of tasting quality of food to the mothers before it is served to the children under Mid Day Meal scheme.
In the Mid Day Meal scheme proforma, which is put in public domain by State Education Department, it is mentioned that “instructions have been issued to all the heads of the institutions to involve the mothers of the students for tasting the meal before serving to students.”
Few schools in past had witnessed instances of food poisoning through this central government sponsored scheme aimed to control drop out of the students at primary and school level.
The Education department has admitted that there are no designated dining halls for the schools due to which the students have to sit in ‘varanda’ and have their meal during the school hours.
While this scheme is implemented in 1,501 schools across the State, the department has conceded that only seven schools have proper arrangement for washing vegetable, pulses, grains and cleaning used utensils.
The food is prepared either by Self Help Groups or Parent Teachers Association in the schools. The government has now decided to give state level training programmes for Self Help Group to be organized in collaboration with Goa College of Home Science.
“The cooks cum helpers would be trained by Institute of Hotel Management. Besides this all the school Headmaster/ Headmistress will be given one day training regarding sensitisation of Mid Day Meal by the State government,” the department has said.
To give the uniformity in the food served, the weekly menu is planned at state level by Department of Education, which is displayed in the schools.
The department has said that calorific value (450 calories and 12 gram of Protein to every child at primary level and 700 calories and 20 gram of proteins to every child at upper primary level) is ensured as the samples of meals are collected during inspections and analysed for their nutritive contents.
TeamTNV
