Intermediate students boarding in social welfare hostels in the state will be served a cup of tea in the morning. “A cup of tea will pep up the students to study more,” an officer said.
With the boarders’ diet charges set to go up from Dec. 9, officials have proposed to revise their diet to make it more nutritous. The proposed new menu, presented at a review meeting with chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy, will be served at breakfast and dinner with snacks in the evening. Lunch will be the mid-day meal served at school.
As per the proposal, the students will get one boiled egg, idli and egg biryani daily, and millets like ragi java or jawar rotis once a week. The students will also get snacks in the evening like groundnut pappunda, green pea mixture or bobbarlu mixture. For dinner, curd will be served in cups to prevent dilution by wardens.
“We want to provide highly nutritious but less expensive food,” said an officer after the review meeting. The menu will be referred to the National Institution of Nutrition (NIN) for its suggestions. Reddy advised the officials to prepare a uniform menu for all hostels in the state.
Around 8.68 lakh students reside in the state’s 6,163 hostels. There are 2,329 hostels administered by the Scheduled Caste Welfare Department, 417 hostels for college students, 1,398 Backward Class welfare hostels, 620 hostels for BC college students, 1,041 hostels for Scheduled Tribe students, 205 college hostels for tribal students, 54 hostels for the disabled and 99 women and child welfare hostels.
The government has increased the diet charges from Rs 475 to Rs 750 per student of classe 3-7, and Rs 535 to Rs850 per student of Class 8-10.