Odisha IAS officers asked to taste mid-day meals in schools

Odisha IAS officers asked to taste mid-day meals in schools

A little more than seven months after taking charge, the Mohan Majhi government has asked all department secretaries to visit at least one Gram Panchayat and assess the level of saturation in the coverage of various development and welfare programmes of the government for basic facilities in that particular Gram Panchayat.
The officers have been asked to interact with the members of the public from different walks of life, patients in community health centres, primary health centres, beneficiaries in Anganwadi centres, and tribal girls in schools and hostels.((Representative Image))

“The officers need to have at least one meal a day (on payment basis) in either an ST/SC Hostel or mid-day meals in schools or in an Aahar Kendra or in an orphanage to check the quality of food and the ambience and spend a night at the sub-divisional level to closely monitor the implementation of various schemes. They may use the opportunity to interact with the students/inmates and get feedback on important issues like security, facilities, behaviour meted out to them etc,” said Development Commissioner Anu Garg in a letter to all department secretaries.

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The officers have been asked to interact with the members of the public from different walks of life, patients in community health centres, primary health centres, beneficiaries in Anganwadi centres, and tribal girls in schools and hostels.

The directive to the IAS officers to taste the MDM meals comes at a time when nutritionists have raised questions on the quality in light of rising costs and nutritional standards. Though the state government recently raised the per child expenditure on MDM to 5,90 for primary students and 8.82 for upper primary students which would benefit 4.3 million children, nutritionists have demanded raising the cost to at least 20 per child as per PM-POSHAN guidelines, due to rising prices of essential ingredients like pulses and eggs. The state government last month formed a five-member committee comprising nutritionists to review and suggest improvements to the MDM menu.

The Development Commissioner asked the secretaries to review the utilisation of funds under DMF and Odisha Mineral Bearing Area Development Corporation and visit the projects taken up with these funds in eight major DMF districts like Angul, Jajpur, Jharsuguda, Keonjhar, Koraput, Mayurbhanj, Rayagada and Sundargarh.

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The officers have been asked to hold a review meeting at the district headquarters and share the findings of the visit with collectors and other officials, besides submitting a report in this connection to the chief secretary. The government has allotted districts to 30 additional chief secretaries, principal secretaries, secretaries and additional secretaries in this regard and has asked them to plan the first visit by March-end.

The development commissioner asked secretaries to visit 29 aspirational blocks to review the implementation of various development and welfare programmes. The officials should randomly select the areas of visit within the district including inaccessible and tribal-dominated regions, she stressed.

However, the opposition Congress said the district visit has not resulted in any improvement in the quality of governance. “The government just issues these routine instructions to secretaries and the officers visit the districts. But has there been any audit on how these visits have helped the state? There needs to be greater accountability and transparency regarding the outcomes of these visits,” said senior Congress leader Niranjan Patnaik.

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Original news source Credit: www.hindustantimes.com

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