Millions of school children, mostly from the poorest of poor families in Bihar, were not served their mid-day meal Thursday as 3,00,000 school teachers began a boycott of the scheme.
The teachers' boycott virtually paralysed the mid-day meal scheme in the state. Principal Secretary Amarjeet Sinha of the department of education requested the teachers to cooperate with the government till alternative arrangements are made for the preparation and distribution of the school meals.
"We have requested teachers to assist the government to run the scheme till alternative arrangements are made," Sinha told reporters here.
Ignoring the state government's appeal to continue the mid-day meal scheme, the teachers began their boycott Thursday.
Ten days after the death of 23 children in Saran district after they ate food that contained a poisonous insecticide, teachers in the state are in no mood to assist the government in continuing the scheme.
Bihar State Primary Teachers' Association president Barajnandan Sharma said teachers were boycotting the scheme. "With teachers staying away from the preparation and distribution of the mid-day meal, hundreds of thousands of children did not get food," he said.
Bihar mid-day meal director R. Lakshamanan admitted that the teachers' boycott meant that millions of children would return from school without having their meal.
"We had appealed to the teachers to cooperate," Lakshamanan told IANS.
In view of teachers' demand to hand over the scheme to NGOs or some other agency, Akshay Patra, a charitable organisation, was invited to take it over in Patna and Muzaffarpur districts.
Soon after the teachers' association announced its boycott of the scheme, Bihar Education Minister P.K. Shahi said it was difficult to arrange for an agency to run the scheme in 72,000 schools across the state.
"The government does not have the resources to hire an agency for the huge task of serving mid-day meals to 1.60 crore students," Shahi said.
Last Saturday, a forensic science laboratory report confirmed the presence of toxic insecticide strains in the cooking oil used for making food at the school where the children died.
The poisonous substance, organophosphorus, in oil samples collected from the school, was more than five times what is normally present in commercial preparations available in the market, police said.
Organophosphorus compounds are degradable organic compounds containing carbon-phosphorus bonds used primarily in pest control.
