Midday meal workers go hungry: Shocking ineptitude or mere apathy?

It is shocking that cooks who prepare mid-day meals for millions of schoolchildren across Karnataka are themselves going hungry as the government has failed to pay them honorarium since April. Note also that the honorariums are paltry sums ranging from Rs 2,000-3,500. In this day and age, how are they supposed to live on such meagre pay? And how are they supposed to feed their families when they are not paid even these meagre sums for several months? This is not the first time that the mid-day meal cooks have been left in the lurch. A similar delay last year had forced them to stage a protest then, too. School Education Minister B C Nagesh should not have allowed the situation to come to such a pass. He must be held accountable for this. The question of subsistence aside, one wonders how these cooks and workers who prepare food for children are supposed to maintain the basic standards of hygiene required for such a job, given their low pay and difficult living conditions.

Worse, the government has not released money to many schools either to buy mid-day meal supplies for over three months now. Teachers, another underpaid community, say they are spending money from their own pockets to ensure that their students, who hail from poor families, do not go hungry. Many teachers have expressed the apprehension that this is perhaps a prelude to the government scrapping the mid-day meal scheme entirely, just as it did Indira Canteens that fed the urban poor at subsidised rates. Commissioner of the Department of Public Instruction R Vishal has said that the delay in the release of payments is because the State is migrating to a new financial management system to facilitate direct transfers to beneficiaries’ accounts. Could not the government have continued the old system or made other arrangements to make the payments until the new system was up and running? How callous and irresponsible can government get?

Would the Commissioner or any other government servant, ministers and elected representatives, who have entitled themselves to sumptuous pay and allowances, tolerate such an undue delay in the release of their own salaries and benefits? Let’s hope our MLAs and MLCs find time during the ongoing legislature session to discuss the issue and ensure that the mid-day meal cooks are paid immediately.