Small students will get ‘Mid Day Meal’ biscuits instead of khichuri

News Desk: There is no new allocation for school feeding project in poverty stricken areas at present. The government wants to continue work on the project for the next one year without allocation. In this case, instead of the khichuri of the 'Mid Day Meal' project, the distribution of nutritious biscuits will continue. The project will be reconsidered after one year.

It is learned that the work of 'Mid Day Meal' project will be completed on June 30. In this situation, the government is not giving new budget in this sector. That being said, think of alternatives to this project to reduce costs. But it takes a year of monitoring to see what alternatives will be put in place. Therefore, the work of this project will be continued from the surplus part of the previous budget from July 1.

In the meantime, an investment project proposal at an estimated cost of Tk 18,290 crore was sent to the Planning Commission for expansion of all primary schools in the country in phases to keep the school mill activities of the project running. The project proposal was not recommended for approval at the ECNEC meeting chaired by the Prime Minister on June 1. The meeting was instructed to review the ongoing school mill project.

Since the ongoing school feeding project will end on June 30, it will not be possible to distribute food among students at the school level from July. Failure to provide school meals to meet the nutritional deficiencies of students during school days and to curb hunger will cause irreparable damage to health.

The Ministry of Primary and Mass Education says it will take at least a year to review the school feeding activities under implementation by other ministries / departments, including ongoing projects, to determine an effective model and verify the accuracy of cost estimates. In this case, the cumulative cost of the ongoing project till this month will be 4 thousand 517 crore 8 lakh. Of this, Tk 3,273.98 crore will be spent in the GoB sector and the entire amount of project assistance will not be spent. In other words, 473 crore 9 lakh rupees will remain unspent in the GoB sector. In this situation, it will be possible to run this activity for 12 months from July 2021 if only high quality nutritious biscuits are provided to the running schools of the school feeding project with unspent money.

In this regard, Director General of the Department of Primary Education AM Mansurul Alam said, considering the overall aspect, the duration of the ongoing School Feeding Program (3rd Amendment) project in the poverty-stricken areas is being extended by one year. In this case, the contract with the NGOs engaged in the distribution of biscuits in the school under the ongoing project will expire this June.

He said there was no need to sign agreements with NGOs if the project was extended from next month (July) to June 2022 without any cost increase to save costs. Biscuits will be distributed by the Department of Primary Education's own manpower.