Lizards found in mid-day meal for South Delhi school children

Primary school students in South Delhi were saved from lizard-infested lunches on Wednesday as teachers at their municipal corporation school discovered the reptiles just in time.

Teachers at the South Delhi Municipal Corporation’s primary school in Pushp Vihar, Sector-3, Saket, were mixing rice and lentils for the students’ mid-day meal when they discovered lizards in the food, Education Director C. Uday Kumar said.

Mr. Kumar added that a police complaint had been filed against Jay Gee Humanitarian Society, which supplied the meals. After getting the report, 15 other schools that received the same food were asked to discard the meals.

“We will award the teachers who saved the children from the contaminated meals,” said SDMC Standing Committee chairperson Satish Upadhyay.

The Corporation has three contractors that supply mid-day meals to its 589 schools.

Jay Gee Humanitarian Society provides cooked lunches for over one lakh children every day in 183 schools.

At a meeting of the Standing Committee on Wednesday, Leader of the Opposition Farhad Suri said the civic body should also have taken action against Iskcon Food Relief Foundation because of cases in the past. Iskcon Foundation supplies mid-day meals to 61,337 students in 124 schools.

“In the past, rats and wire meshes have been found in the food supplied by Iskcon. Why haven’t we taken action against them? Are the Iskcon rats not poisonous,” asked Mr. Suri.

The Education Director said an inquiry on the incident would be done within 15 days. Mr. Upadhyay also asked the Education Department to present a report on the condition of all schools in the next meeting of the committee.

This is in the wake of Deputy Mayor Praveen Rana’s inspections of SDMC schools this week that found toilets and classrooms in poor conditions.