Patna:
A week after the mid-day meal tragedy in which 23 children lost their lives in Bihar, nearly 3,00,000 teachers across the state began their boycott of the scheme today. As a result, millions of school children were not served their mid-day meal in schools.
The state government had appealed these teachers to continue their participation in the scheme, but they say they don't want to take any risk now unless a full proof system is put in place.
The teachers want that the scheme should be handed over to some other agency, like NGOs, but the state government says it is difficult to arrange for an agency to run the scheme in 72,000 schools across the state.
"The government does not have the resources to hire an agency for the huge task of serving mid-day meals to 1.60 crore students," Mr Shahi said.
However, after the teachers' association announced its boycott of the scheme, a charitable organization named Akshay Patra had been invited to take it over in Patna and Muzaffarpur districts.
Meanwhile, a forensic report on the free lunch served to children at the Chhapra school, where the incident took place on July 16, has confirmed traces of insecticides in the food sample. The Forensic Science Lab report found the pesticide in the samples of oil from the container, food remains on the platter and mixture of rice with vegetables on aluminium utensils, all of which were collected from the school.
A report by the Bihar government had said that there was widespread mismanagement among all those people involved in implementing the mid-day meal scheme.
The tragedy left the village of Gandaman broken and furious, and triggered a national debate over the world's largest school feeding programme. The absconding principal of the school, Meena Devi, surrendered yesterday and moved court for bail. The principal has been charged with murder and criminal conspiracy.