By IANS,
Patna : At least 21 students of a school at Khemanbigha in Nalanda district fell ill soon after having their mid-day meal, officials said Tuesday. Their parents told police that a lizard was found in the food.
“They are suffering from food poisoning but after initial treatment they are out of danger,” said a doctor at the hospital where the children have been admitted after their meal Monday.
Various such cases have been reported in Bihar in the last one month.
Last Wednesday a lizard was found in the meal served at a school at Basniawa in Nalanda. Over 25 students fell ill. The state government has ordered arrest of five people, including the headmaster and two teachers of the school.
During an all-party meeting, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar admitted that there were shortcomings in the implementation of the mid-day meal scheme, under which students in government-run schools are served lunch. He has asked the Human Resource department to look into the scheme which covers more than 80,000 schools across the state.
A recent report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) was highly critical of the mid-day meal scheme in Bihar during 2007-08. “There has been complete absence of internal controls, regular monitoring and evaluation of the mid-day meal scheme for children during 2007-08,” the report said.
Bihar is spending more than Rs.2,000 crore on the scheme.
The mid-day meal scheme is the world’s largest nutrition-supplement programme, covering more than a million schools across India. It was launched in 1995 to tackle the twin problems of dropouts in primary schools and malnutrition among children.