NEW DELHI: Over 930 children reported sick after eating midday meal in schools across the country in the last three years, maximum of whom are from Jharkhand, reveal figures compiled by the Union Human Resources Development Ministry.
In response to a question in the Lok Sabha, the government also said that while 259 children fell sick in Jharkhand in 2016 after having the school meal, this number was 201 in Maharashtra and 153 in UP.
While the total number of children who reported ill after school meal was 801, it did not cross 50 in 2017, 2018 or 2019 (till November).
In reply to a separate question in the House, the Ministry also informed that a total of 52 instances of complaints were reported regarding corruption in the implementation of the scheme in the last three years.
Of these, the highest were in Uttar Pradesh.
Through the MDM, lunch is provided to over 10 crore school children in nearly 11.4 lakh government schools.
Recently the government had also started a plan to get the scheme monitored regularly by resource co-coordinators specially assigned with the task of constantly checking on quality and quantity of food being served to children in government schools.
These resource co-ordinators, who will be either teachers given additional responsibility of the task or will be NGO personnel chosen by the state governments, will have six to ten schools assigned to each of them.
Senior officials in the school education department of the Ministry said that the Centre has already written to states to appoint nearly 2 lakh such co-ordinators and the project will start by November.
Currently, there is no scheme for taking feedback from a neutral party on the scheme.