Probe bad food supply in government schools

Lately, incidents of food poisoning at government residential schools in Telangana are on the rise, with dozens of students landing in hospitals at alarming intervals. A girl student of the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya in Kagaznagar in Kumuram Bheem Asifabad district died this Wednesday while undergoing treatment at a private hospital. 

The cause of her death is yet to be ascertained, but her parents attribute it to contaminated food. They staged a protest outside the school. This comes close on the heels of the hospitalisation of 33 students of a social welfare ashram school in Wardhannapet in Warangal rural district. The children and parents claim a lizard was found in the meals. The usual reaction of the government in these cases is less than satisfactory and can only be termed knee-jerk. In the Wardhannapet case, the warden and the cook were suspended pending an inquiry. In July, students of Basara IIIT were hospitalised after reportedly consuming contaminated food. A month ago, they released a photo of a dead frog in the food.

In most cases, the standard response from authorities is to take action against a few and offer a plethora of assurances. The incidents are disconcerting symptoms of a deeper malaise of negligence, irresponsibility, and a lack of transparency, affecting the administration of hostels run by the social welfare department. A survey by Hakku, an Institute of Perception Studies initiative, defines the magnitude of the problem. It points out that in August alone, 350 students in nine districts fell ill after eating contaminated food. And in a matter of eight months ending August 31, approximately 1,070 students were affected in 17 districts.

The government does not seem to understand the gravity of the situation. It has announced the Swatcha Gurukulam programme to keep the ashram schools spick and span. Its success is anybody’s guess. More often than not, the government withdraws into a shell, drawing an impervious iron curtain around itself. This compounds the problem as it is imperative to understand what is going wrong. The cash crunch is surely not the reason. Things have come to such a pass that several parents are now afraid of sending their children to these schools. That defeats the very purpose of their existence. The need of the hour is transparency and accountability. We cannot let our children die.