Hyderabad: Harish Rao inaugurates centralised kitchen for Rs 5 meal scheme

Hyderabad: To implement the prestigious Rs 5 per meal scheme for 20,000 attenders of in-patients in 18 government hospitals in Hyderabad, a fully automated centralised kitchen developed by Hare Krishna Movement Charitable Foundation (HKMCF), was inaugurated by Health Minister, T Harish Rao here on Monday.

The centralised kitchen has a capacity of 10,000 meals per day, which will cater exclusively towards providing subsidised meals to attenders of in-patients and out-patients at government hospitals in Hyderabad.

Speaking on the occasion, Harish Rao said, “patients and their relatives from across Telangana visit the 18 tertiary government hospitals in Hyderabad. Patients undergoing treatment stay as in-patients for a long time and while they get access to hospital’s nutritious food, quite often the attenders struggle to afford food outside. The Rs 5 per meal is meant for such people.”

Apart from subsidised food, the patient attenders also have access to night shelters, safe drinking water and fans at the 18 government hospitals. To implement the scheme, State government incurs an annual expenditure of Rs. 38.66 crore. On an average, each meal cost around Rs. 26.25 of which the attenders of patients pays Rs 5 while the rest subsidy amount of Rs. 21.25 per meal is be paid by the State government to HKM.

The HKMCF said the centralised kitchen was established after generous sponsorship of Rs. 2.50 crore from Vattam Ramesh Babu and Pradeep Gopal Agarwal along with their family.

This high tech centralized kitchen, which works on solar power, is equipped with advanced cooking equipment like automated pulihora mixing machines, vegetable peeling, cutting machines, bio-fuel fired curry cooking machines along with electric based rice cooking steamers and boilers.

The president of Hare Krishna Movement Charitable Foundation Satya Gaura Chandra Dasa Prabhu and others were present.