Mid-day meal is going to return in a big way in primary

The government is going to re-introduce the mid-day meal after two years to reduce the dropout rate of students from the education system. This school feeding program is going to be launched in 150 upazila primary schools on a larger scale. According to several sources of the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, there is a plan to launch the project from the beginning of next August.

According to the development project proposal of the ministry, initially this project will be launched for a period of three years for about 3.7 lakh students of 19 thousand government primary schools in poverty prone areas of the country. The cost of implementation of the project is estimated to be around 4 thousand 700 crores. Out of the estimated expenditure, 4 thousand 181 crores will be spent on food procurement sector. And the rest of the money will be spent on contractors, transport, service charges, food distribution and packaging. If the project is successful, this mid-day meal will be introduced in schools across the country.

A top official of the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, who did not wish to be named, said that Finance Minister Abul Hasan Mahmud Ali himself mentioned the school feeding program in his budget speech. The Planning Commission has also indicated that the scheme is likely to get speedy approval as mid-day meal for students is on the government's priority list.

Incidentally, the World Food Program conducted a feeding project for school students from 2001 to 2009. Then in 2010, the school feeding program was officially launched in more than 15,300 primary schools in 104 poverty-prone upazilas. Under this program, fortified biscuits were distributed to around 3 million children and hot meals were distributed to students of three upazilas. The project runs till June 2022. Meanwhile, in August 2020, the concerned ministry formulated a project of Tk 17,290 crore to distribute food to all students of 65,566 government primary schools for a period of five years. However, the project was not approved in the Eknek meeting when there was a storm of criticism from different quarters about the officials' trip abroad to learn how to make mid-day meal khichuri.

In this regard, the then Planning Minister MA Mannan said that the project was not approved as the Prime Minister was concerned about the structure of the project. He was of the opinion that cooking khichuri in school could disrupt the education program. And officials from the Ministry of Primary Education said it would be difficult for them to provide hot meals as it requires manpower and space for cooking.

Meanwhile, the Secretary of the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, Farid Ahmed, said that the government will provide not only fortified biscuits, but also seasonal fruits, bananas, eggs and bread in this new program to be started at the end of this year. Apart from this, another parallel school feeding program will be launched for about 220,000 students of primary schools in Cox's Bazar and Bandarban districts in July.

Notably, a 2018 study by the World Food Program found that the mid-day meal program increased school enrollment by 4.2 percent and dropped the dropout rate by 7.5 percent.