Some Vanamati quarantines reject food over poor quality

Nagpur: For the last three days, over 150 people quarantined at Vanamati have refused to accept meals being provided by the private contractor appointed by Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC).
The inmates resorted to the protest after officials allegedly refused to offer better quality food following repeated requests. They are now banking on an NGO providing them meals though it is not at all times.
“We eat some and keep the rest for next meal. We have no option as we can’t eat the food provided to us by official contractor. All our appeals have been turned down. Home food is not allowed but a couple of NGOs are allowed to provide meals,” inmates told TOI.
Like MLA Hostel, Vanamati too so far had smooth operations until the NMC took over food arrangements. The original contractor had been providing food at a higher rate but was forced to stop work after NMC fixed a lower cost. These inmates too found worms in the food, and alleged rice, chapatis and dal were of poor quality.
Additional municipal commissioner Ram Joshi said not all inmates were protesting, only around 35 are not accepting the food. “An NGO offered to provide food to these people who didn’t like the taste of meals provided by NMC contractor. We allowed the NGO to serve them meals as it was already providing the inmates sehri and iftaar eatables,” Joshi said.
He said only those who have eaten the food provided by the earlier contractor are the ones not liking the service of the new caterer. “Others who didn’t taste the earlier meals have no issues,” he said.
Some inmates said the contractor was not even packaging the food properly. “Chapatis were rolled in newspaper sheets, while rice, dal and cooked vegetable were coming in plastic pouches. After first day protest, the contractor changed the packing while the quality remained unchanged. The food is being cooked from grains supplied at ration shops. Hence, we are unable to eat it though we tried a lot. Since officials refused to budge, we simply decided to reject the packets,” they said.