Mid-day meal workers oppose privatisation

Say thousands will lose jobs

Noon meal scheme workers staging a protest in Ongole. Kommuri Srinivas

Up in arms against the privatisation of the mid-day meals scheme for schools in the State, members of the Mid-day Meal Workers Union decided to fight for their jobs.

In a meeting held here, the future action plan of the union was discussed. Union state secretary K. Swaroopa Rani said private organisations and NGOs roped in by the government did not supply food to the students for free but got funds in crores of rupees from the government as well as foreign nationals.

MLC Boddu Nageswara Rao said as per the orders of Supreme Court, the government was responsible for serving nutritious food to the students. He said though there were no basic facilities at about 50% of the schools, workers had been doing their job effectively for the past four years. “The NGOs Iskcon and Akshaya Patra served only single variety of food in Chittoor as part of a pilot and students refused to eat it after a few days. Then, the government asked workers to continue preparing food for students. Despite witnessing such issues, the government is still making plans to hand over the scheme to NGOs,” he said. Speakers also stressed that thousands of workers would lose jobs due to privatisation.