Tamil Nadu announces free breakfast for 1 lakh primary school children

CHENNAI: More than one lakh students would soon get a free healthy morning meal of a variety of upma, wheat vegetable kichdi or rava pongal with sambar with vegetables besides dishes with millets. Keeping its promise to provide free breakfast for government primary school students in Tamil Nadu, besides the free noon meal, the state government issued an order to roll out the 'Chief Minister's Breakfast Scheme' at a cost of 33.56 crore. This would benefit 1,14,095 students in 1,545 government primary schools.
Chief minister M K Stalin announced that a government order has been issued for the first phase of the programme, while speaking at the launch of the psychological training programme for school students on Wednesday. Stalin had announced the free breakfast scheme in the assembly on May 7 for students from Classes I to V to help them overcome nutrition deficiencies.

The scheme would cover 1,545 primary schools in corporations, municipalities, panchayats and tribal areas as well. It would be implemented by the social welfare department and heads of local bodies like corporation and municipality commissioners.
Breakfast would be provided to the students on all working days, and at least twice a week it would include dishes made with millets that are cultivated in the state. The menu for this 'first-of-its-kind initiative in the country' would include a variety of upma with sambar, and rava kesari or semia kesari. Raw materials for the dishes would be FSSAI-certified and reuse of oil is prohibited.
School authorities should check the quality of the food before it is served to the students and food safety officials would conduct surprise checks. The food would be prepared in a central kitchen or an appropriate place. A monitoring committee comprising officials from social welfare and women empowerment, rural development, urban administration, Tamil Nadu women development corporation, school education, integrated child development services scheme and food safety would be constituted.