CHENNAI: Members of Tamil Nadu Nutritious Meal Employees’ Association who are on strike since October 29 demanding fulfilment of five-point charter of demands, suspended their agitation on Friday after Social Welfare Minister V Saroja made an appeal to them.
R Noorjahan, association general secretary, said Social Welfare Secretary K Manivasan promised to consider two of their demands relating to food allowance being given to students and travelling charges for taking cooked food items to noon-meal centres. As such, the association would take a decision on the next course of action after Deepavali, he said.
Earlier in the day, Social Welfare Minister V Saroja, in a statement, said the noon-meal scheme was being implemented in 43,205 centres benefitting 51.96 lakh students. As many as 97,669 workers, including 31,493 noon-meal organisers, 31,437 cooks and 31,739 cooking assistants were engaged in implementing this scheme. “The State government has been looking after noon-meal workers well compared to the other States. For 2017-18 alone, the State government had allocated Rs 1,624.24 crore for implementing the noon-meal scheme,” she said.
The minister also gave a detailed account on how the pay for noon-meal workers had gone up after implementation of Seventh Pay Commission recommendations besides giving many allowances such as DA hike, rental allowance, medical allowance, festival advance and ex- gratia for Pongal.
51.96 lakh students
Social Welfare Minister V Saroja said the noon-meal scheme was implemented in 43,205 centres benefitting 51.96 lakh students. 97,669 workers are engaged in implementing this scheme.