A social audit of the school midday meal scheme to implement it more efficiently has been completed in 12 districts, Minister for General Education V. Sivankutty has said.
At a press meet here on Saturday, the Minister said the General Education Department and the Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA) were making efforts to complete this year’s social audit by March 10. The audit had got under way on January 23.
After inviting Expression of Interest (EoI) from various agencies, KILA had been selected for conducting the audit. Twenty schools were selected from each district, taking the number of schools where the audit is being conducted to 280. Schools from coastal area, hilly belt, and tribal area have been included in the audit, conducted in three phases – audit, school sabha, and public hearing.
Resource persons from KILA visit the schools and conduct training for select parents of the scheme beneficiaries. These parents then inspect registers in connection with the scheme and physical infrastructure, prepare reports, present these in school sabhas, and get these passed.
Five schools where the audit is held are grouped into a cluster, and one public hearing is held for each cluster.
In these public meetings, people’s representatives from ward member to MLAs and representatives of various departments such as Health, Agriculture, Supplyco, Food Corporation of India, Food Safety department and so on take participate and reply to any queries that arise related to mid-day meal scheme.
This exercise helps parents and the public become familiar with the scheme and can gauge if the scheme is benefiting their children the way it is meant to.
Director of General Education Jeevan Babu K. said the audit was being held on the directions of the Union government.
The Minister said ₹50 crore had been sanctioned by the State government and ₹126 crore was expected from the Union government in a week for the scheme.
All children who were part of the scheme would be given 5 kg of rice each during the summer vacations. Distribution of rice would begin on March 20.
