Audit of midday meals account of schools soon

Nagpur: As part of a national exercise, Nagpur schools serving midday meals (MDM) have been asked to submit financial records from 2015-20 for audit by a third party. City schools have been given time till Friday to submit all the necessary documents.
Gautam Gedam, MDM in-charge for Nagpur district, said, “The financial records are already available with school. It will take just a couple of hours for them to collate the data and submit it in the format required by us.”
He added that this is being done as part of a national level exercise. “The financial audit is being done for MDM scheme because the central government wants to ensure that it is reaching beneficiaries and that financial grants are utilized accordingly,” said Gedam.
As per sources in the education department at Pune headquarters, the audit exercise is more for flushing out unutilized MDM funds that are lying with schools. “In Maharashtra, as across the country too, I believe there are many schools who do not utilize the full MDM amount. Many schools keep funds in their bank account which can basically be misused,” the official said.
In Nagpur, at least this audit is unlikely to reveal unutilized cash deposits.
Gedam said, “Last financial year itself, we carried out this exercise and recovered all unutilized cash. Over a crore was recovered and returned to the government. So right now, it’s probably impossible to find unutilized cash with schools now.”
MDM is served in government and grant-in-aid private schools for students studying in Std I-VIII.