Schools in Tinsukia reluctant to serve ‘poor’ quality food supplied by NGO

Schools in Tinsukia reluctant to serve ‘poor’ quality food supplied by NGO

Our Correspondent

TINSUKIA: The midday meal services have been badly affected after several schools under Hapjan and Guijan blocks in Tinsukia district showed reluctance to accept poor quality food supplied by Ghanshyam Sewa Samiti, one of the14 NGOs engaged to provide cooked meals to schools. With two more school children being admitted in GNB Civil Hospital in Tinsukia, the number of admitted children rose to 14 on Saturday while more than 82 students of Baruahola High School in Panitola, who developed symptoms of nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea after consuming contaminated food, were discharged after medication.

In Tinsukia, the cooked food for nearly 48,000 children belonging to 346 schools is being supplied from a centralized kitchen located at Makum Road and the preparation of food for the next day begins at midnight. According to a source, the first set of meals gets ready by night, which is being delivered almost after six hours. Though health officials were not available for comment on the quality of food, it was possibly the dal that caused sickness. The school sources said they detected foul smell emanating from one of the dal containers but before they could warn, some of the students had already consumed the food. Most intriguingly, the Ghanshyam Sewa Samity was withdrawn from the contract by NCT of Delhi in 2013 after it supplied food contaminated with insects. Conscious people have questioned how the Assam Government and SSA, in particular, could award such a sensitive task without veracity?

Meanwhile, more than several hundred people of greater Panitola area took to the streets and blocked the NH 37 for two hours demanding the immediate cancellation of the MDM contract. The protest was held under the aegis of Panitola Anchalik Students’ Union and a good number of school children, women’s group and house makers joined in the demonstration.

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