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Tur dal for midday meals shortly

Supply was halted owing to high price; government has now released more funds
Last Updated 27 November 2015, 17:32 IST

The State government has released an additional sum of Rs 55 lakh to the district for purchasing tur dal to be used for midday meal scheme. This additional grant will suffice till March 2016.

Accordingly, the supply of tur dal to all schools (government and aided) in the district will begin on November 30. The children will get dal-sambar in their midday menu later.
Under the midday meal scheme free food is being provided to students of Class 1 to Class ten for children in government and aided schools.

There are as many as 1,959 government schools and 106 aided schools in the district and a total of 1,40,010 students are being benefitted by the scheme. The Food, Civil Supplies and Consumers Affairs department supplies food grains to the schools under the scheme.

As much as 4,000 quintals of rice, 100 quintals of salt, 800 quintal of tur dal, 23,000 litres of cooling oil and 700 quintals of wheat is required per month for the scheme.

This apart, the head masters of the respective schools purchase vegetables locally. The students are given rice and sambar (made with tur dal) from Monday to Friday and on Saturdays the children are given food made of wheat.

The State government had fixed Rs 79 as purchase price per kilo of tur dal. But, over the past three months, the price of the tur dal has skyrocketed and hence the contractors had hesitated to supply tur dal at the rate fixed by the government. Because of this, tur dal was not supplied to all the beneficiary schools in the district.

“The contractors had refused to supply tur dal at the price fixed by the government due to the exponential hike in the price of the commodity. Thus, the supply of tur dal was stalled and the schools had to make do without it. However, the State government has released an additional sum of Rs 55 lakh to the district for purchasing tur dal required for midday meal scheme” Education Officer in charge of midday meal scheme, S N Kannaiah told Deccan Herald.

Since tur dal was not supplied to schools for the past and one months, the students were being provided chitranna and khara bath. Some other schools were managing with rasam. In some cases, the teachers themselves had purchased tur dal by spending money from their pockets while some were purchasing dal with the money available  under the funds with School Development and Managing Committee. Moreover, the Zilla Panchayat had asked the schools to use more of pulses till the price of tur dal came down. Kannaiah said that the Karnataka State Food Corporation has purchased tur dal from the open market by calling tenders and thus the problem had been addressed. He said that all schools will be supplied with tur dal beginning Monday. The additional funds released will suffice till March 2016, he added.

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(Published 27 November 2015, 17:32 IST)

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