Telangana: Mid-day meal agencies await pending bill payments

Besides salaries of their staff, bills for commodities are said to be pending for the last eight months, this has led to the serving of eggs to students in mid-day meals becoming a huge burden for agencies.

Karimnagar: Mid-day meal agencies, which are struggling to serve meals to students in the wake of an increase in prices of vegetables and other commodities, are facing more financial distress with the State government to clear their bills since the last eight months.

Besides salaries of their staff, bills for eggs and for Ragi Java are said to be pending for the last eight months. This has led to the serving of eggs to students in mid-day meals becoming a huge burden for agencies. The bills of eggs served to the students studying Class 9 to 10 have been pending since January this year. Egg bills of a few months of Class 1 to 8 students are also pending.

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While a majority of the agencies are serving eggs by borrowing money from money lenders, some of them are not serving it regularly. Eggs are supposed to be served to students three times in a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In the meantime, a hike in the price of eggs too has become another burden for the agencies. The government is providing Rs.5 per egg. However, each egg in the market costs Rs 6 to Rs 7. Though the price of eggs increased in the market, the government was not enhancing the price, with the agencies forced to bear the excess amount.

The agencies have also not been paid the bills of the Chief Minister’s Breakfast Scheme, with reports that the current government has unofficially scrapped the scheme itself. The breakfast scheme, launched by the previous BRS government in selected schools across the State on October 7 last year, had idli/sambar, wheat rava, upma/chutney, puri/aaloo khorma, tomato bath, khichdi or pongal being served to students for breakfast. The responsibility of preparation and serving this was given to mid-day meal agencies.

Same is the case with Ragi Java bills, which are also pending for quite long.

Speaking to Telangana Today, Mid-Day Meal Workers’ Association district president, Burra Manjula, said that despite several representations, the bills were not released by the government. Stating that their salaries were also pending, she said the State government had promised to enhance their salaries but had not fulfilled its promise so far.