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Naveen inaugurates centralised kitchen for mid-day meal scheme

— Photo: Lingaraj Panda

What’s cooking!: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik with Leena Joseph, head of mid-day meal programme of Nandi Foundation, at inauguration of its hi-tech kitchen in Berhampur on Saturday.

BERHAMPUR: A large automated centralised kitchen for mid-day meal programme in schools was inaugurated in the city by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Saturday.

This project is a public-private partnership initiative. It is said to be the largest automated centralised mid-day meal project for schools in the State. It was a joint venture of the Government and the Naandi foundation of Hyderabad.

This kitchen would prepare and deliver high-nutrition noon meals to more than a lakh schoolchildren in the city and its adjoining areas everyday.

This project has come up at cost of Rs. 94 lakhs. Half of it was funded by the Orissa Government through the Orissa Mining Corporation (OMC), while the remainder was invested by the Naandi foundation.

The automated centralised kitchen has come up near the railway station. It is at the GVVC Choultry.

This kitchen uses stainless steel cooking vessels with steam injection facilities to ensure fast, uniform and hygienic cooking.

This cooking process retains nutritive values of vegetables and cereals. Diesel-fired boilers generate requisite amount of steam needed for cooking.

The food prepared at this kitchen would be served to 1,03,696 students of 692 primary schools of six blocks of Ganjam district.

The blocks to be benefited by this project were Shergarh, Kukudakhandi, Purushottampur, Rangeilunda, Chatrapur and Purushottampur. Students of 19 primary schools of the city would also get their mid-day meal packets from this project.

The food would be transported through special vehicles of the project. The food packet prepared at the centralised kitchen of the new project would be around 650 calories.

Under the conventional mid-day meal scheme the students get around 450 calories per meal.

The nutritional value of the food supplied was to be monitored by the ‘Global Initiative on Nutrition’.

Leena Joseph, head of the mid-day meal programme of the Naandi foundation, said it was their first mid-day meal project in the State. But they had similar successful automated mid-day meal projects running in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

Ms Joseph said their next mid-day meal project was coming up in Chhatisgarh.

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