CAG detects mid-day meal scam, dropout rate jumps in Hyderabad

Hyderabad: The CAG has come across irregularities in AP’s mid-day meal scheme. The CAG found that 1.42 lakh excess students were shown as beneficiaries in the four districts that were checked. This led to an excess allotment of 3,825 tonnes of rice from 2010 to 2015.

The CAG report stated the annual plans of the commissioner and director of school education had shown more number of students availing the mid-day meal scheme than projected by the annual plans of the DEO. The test check was conducted in Chittoor, Guntur, Krishna and Prakasam districts where huge discrepancies were found. “Around Rs 2.18 crore worth excess rice was allotted in these four districts.

CAG observed that the AP government had not explained the discrepancy between the enrolment figures projected in the annual plans and those maintained by DEOs. When the CAG checked the impact of the mid-day meal scheme, it found that the gap in the transition of students from primary to upper primary level and the increasing dropout rate at primary level was alarming, indicating a downward trend in the retention of students.

In the four sampled districts, enrolment was shown at 14.1 lakh in 2010-11 but it decreased to 13.43 lakh in 2014-15. The AP government attributed the trend to “parents preferring English medium.”

It was also found that teachers do not taste the food cooked for the student though they are supposed to do so. In the case of food poisoning in the ZP High School in Sankarayalapeta in Chittoor district, in which 125 students had suffered stomach pains after mid-day meal, six of the 13 samples tested at the State Food Laboratory in Hyderabad were found to be unsafe.