Days after a contaminated midday meal in Chhapra district claimed the lives of 23 children, three lakh primary school teachers across Bihar today boycotted mid-day meal duties on the ground that it interfered with their teaching work.
Bihar Primary School Teachers Association President Brajnandan Sharma said the mid-day meal duties interfered with teaching duties, and added that it also brought a bad name to them because of corruption indulged in by others.
"Repeated requests made to the government to remove primary teachers from midday meal duty and to appoint an agency for the task, were ignored," Sharma said.
"The Association was forced to take the step and the boycott would continue till the government appointed an agency for the scheme," he added.
The Bihar Government termed this decision as 'irresponsible', and said that it would inform the Supreme Court.
"The scheme is being implemented on the directives of the Supreme Court ... how can you boycott duty suddenly?" asked Principal Secretary Human Resources Development Amarjeet Sinha.
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Sinha said that he had appealed to the primary teachers to call off their boycott for the welfare of the students.
The flagship programme of the Union Government is implemented in 70,200 schools in the state benefiting over 1.30 crore students.