Bangalore: School children to get free milk from July 1

Daijiworld Media Network – Bangalore (SP)

Bangalore, Jun 17: The state government has come up with an initiative to tackle malnutrition among the children through a novel scheme. Chief Minister (CM), Siddaramaiah, has announced that the government will be providing milk to all the school children studying from first to tenth standard in government schools, beginning July 1 this year.

The CM said that the government is committed to the task of tackling the issue of malnutrition among the children, apart from providing quality education to them. He announced that beginning from July 1, the students of government schools will be provided with 150 ml milk free of cost.

It may be recalled that the officials of Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) had expressed their inability to handle increased collection of milk from all over the state subsequent to the announcement of increased subsidy for milk supplied by dairy farmers to it. KMF is also faced with the problem of marketing stock of butter and milk powder held by it. The CM said the scheme to supply milk to the students has been introduced with the aim of helping KMF to handle this issue.

He also said that the government has undertaken the initiative of filling up vacant posts of teachers and lecturers in government schools and colleges, for improving the quality of education being imparted there. He asserted that there is no question of compromising with the quality of education.

The CM told his legislators that the mandate of the people was towards transparence in administration over corruption. “The people wanted clean governance over corruption-ridden BJP government. I have instructed by cabinet colleagues to provide clean administration as per the expectations of the people. It is the need of the hour to be honest, towards achieving the above goal. I expect my ministerial colleagues to fall in line with this advice,” he stated.

Minister for food and civil supplies department, Dinesh Gundu Rao, noted that the system of running fair price shops has lot of loopholes. He said one of the problems is that thousands of BPL cards are in the hands of ineligible persons. He said he has taken up a plan under which he is optimistic of ensuring that this problem is tackled in its entirety within three months.