Schools suffer, No funds for mid-day melas as center delays allocation to Odisha
With a delay in disbursal of maintenance grants to government grants to government schools, some headmasters are spending their own money to run day-to-day affairs in school.
According to reports, for the last six months, schools in the state have not received funds for providing
mid-day meals (MDM) to children.
Sources said since September last year, the state govern-ment has not provided any funds to the schools for MDM because of Central delay.
The noon meals under PM- POSHAN is run with the 60:40 cost arrangement between the Centre and state respectively Under this arrangement, while Centre bears the total cost of s food grains, transportation of foodgrains and management and monitoring of the mid-day meals, state bears the cooking cost and honorarium to cooks cum-help. The states engaged overa lakh cooks to prepare the meals who are getting 1,400 per month.
Special secretary of School and Mass Education depart-ment Raghuram Iyer said, “the Centre has not released its share of inds, the allocation to schools has been delayed. According to the PM-POSHAN portal, 44, 28.963 schoolchildren of both primary and upper primary schools in the state are being provided lunch. And for ration, an amount of 15.42 and 28 10 is being spent for each student at primary and upper primary in the state are being provided he noon meals.
“We used our 40 pc share to fund the meals for a 40 pc share to fund the meals for a few months and have as sured the schools headmasters to reimburse the expenses once the Central share arrives. The department will this week write to the Ministry of Education to look into the issue and release the funds at the earliest.” said Education Minister Samir Dash.
