A glass of milk for students from Thursday

A healthy initiative for students on alternate days

Close on the heels of the government taking an initiative to provide weekly iron and folic acid supplements to prevent anaemia among school students, it has come out with a new scheme to provide milk to students from August 1, across the State.

In all, 1,68,842 students of the district will benefit from the scheme, where students of 1st to 10th standard will be provided milk prepared from whole milk powder.

In total, 1,41,916 students of 987 lower primary, 825 higher primary, 213 high schools will get milk, and 26,926 children of 112 unaided schools (1st to 10th std) will benefit from the scheme.

The government has come forward to implement the scheme after several reports highlighted that more than 50 per cent of the children are suffering from malnutrition and anaemia.

The students will be provided milk thrice a week, on alternate days (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; Saturdays in Urdu schools).

Each student will get 150 ml of milk made of 18 gm whole milk powder.

The boiled milk would be distributed after prayers 15 minutes before the classes begin. The responsibility of preparing the milk has been given to the cook, who would be provided a honorarium of Rs 100 per month.

The Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) will be supplying milk powder to the doorsteps of the schools.

The powder would be added to water, boiled and mixed with sugar before being distributed. The government has earmarked 0.59 paise for the same.

KMF has been directed to mention the date of manufacture, packing date and expiry date on the 1 kg packs to be supplied to schools.

The officials of Department of Public Instructions said that the packets would be dispatched to the schools by July 31( Wednesday) and would be distributed from August 1.