An 84% drop in the number of underweight children and an unexplained change in terminology for identifying malnourished children in Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) schools, and non-governmental organisation (NGO) Praja Foundation has raised a red flag on this.
Measures suggested
A report released by the NGO on Monday highlighted the status of nutrition of children in civic-run schools and suggested several measures to improvise conditions on the ground.
According to the report, 64,681 students from Class I to Class X were found to be malnourished during BMC health check-ups in 2015-16. However, in 2016-17, the Right to Information data obtained by the NGO shows no malnourished students. In 2016-17, as many as 73,112 children were found to be underweight. However in 2017-18, the number fell to 11,720, a drop of nearly 84%.
“There are a lot of unexplained changes that the corporation has suddenly adopted. Firstly, they have changed the nomenclature of malnourished to underweight even as the formula of ‘weight to height’ still remains the same. They should explain why they have changed it. Secondly, if the underweight cases have dropped by 84%, how have they achieved this?” asked Milind Mhaske, Director, Praja Foundation.
“If the number of underweight students has fallen so dramatically, why did the municipal commissioner give an extra allocation of ₹27.38 crore for nutritive supplementary meals in BMC schools from the academic year 2018-19?” he asked.
The report also said there is a need to regularly monitor the quality of mid-day meals in schools and screen junior and senior kindergarten children.
