Local foods for Mid-Day-Meal
Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, February 14 2013:
In a new development, the Government of India is set to take up necessary measures so that locally available nutritious food products are given to children under its flagship Mid-Day-Meal Scheme.
The new measures have been initiated considering easy availability of local food products as compared to food products procured from far-off markets.
India is one of the pioneering countries which has been successfully implementing such a programme and cooks are the mainstay of the Mid-Day-Meal scheme, said an official source.
Already, due procedures have been initiated to train cooks on preparing nutritious mid-day-meal from food items available around schools.
Expenditure for training cooks would be borne by the Government of India.
Moreover, TA/DA may be given to cooks for coming to training centres.
There are around 27 lakh cooks working for Mid-Day-Meal Scheme.
Yet, no States would be required to spend any money on training the cooks.
It is likely that the training programme (of cooks) may be conducted at the beginning of the next financial year.
But State officials have an apprehension that a number of phony cooks may come out when the training programme is initiated in the State.
At present, most of the cooks working for Mid-Day Meal Scheme in Manipur are genuine but there is no guarantee that phony cooks would not come out when the training programme is conducted.
Cooks working for Mid-Day-Meal Scheme are given honorarium of Rs 1000 per month for 10 months in a year.
Nonetheless, the honorarium would be certainly increased from the next financial year though it is not known by how much the honorarium would be increased.