No eggs with noon-meal for tribal children in TN's Krishnagiri, probe begins

Chennai, Feb 9 (IANS) Krishnagiri district collector (DC) in Tamil Nadu will conduct an inquiry into the alleged lack of eggs in the noon-meal scheme of a tribal school in the district.

There have been complaints that Irular (ST) students of the Panchayat Union School in Kadambakuttai in Krishnagiri school were not receiving mandatory eggs along with their noon-meal since the past couple of weeks.

It may be noted that Kadambukuttai in Krishnagiri district is an Irular settlement and teachers are deputed to the school from Kelamangalam since June 2023. There were instances of teachers, who were deputed from Kelamangalam, not reaching the tribal settlement school.

The noon-meal organiser of the Kadambakuttai school, Devarajiamma when contacted told IANS that there was regular supply of 180 eggs every month with a fortnightly supply of 90 eggs at a time and that this was the required quantity of eggs for the school.

However the supplier said that as the person who used to supply eggs was not available since Monday and hence the shortage of eggs. Devarajamma said the issue would be sorted out on Friday.

Meanwhile, Krishnagiri District Collector K.M. Sarayu told IANS that she would look into the issue and conduct a detailed inquiry.

K.R. Amudham, social activist and researcher on the education among the tribal children told IANS that the issue was grave and that those responsible should not be allowed to go unpunished. He said that nutritious noon meal scheme was directly proportional to the increase in percentage of school enrollment of Irular tribes and added that stringent punishment must be meted out to those responsible.