The mid-day meal, a government scheme to provide nutritional food to kids at pre-primary schools (Anganwadi), is always in the headlines for the wrong reasons. This time again, one of the Anganwadi centres on Sinhgad Road is making headlines as worms were found in the food packets.
Kids aged from six months to three years are given food packets of moong dal khichdi premix from the government under the mid-day meal scheme. However, the food packets which were distributed in one of the Anganwadi centres on Sinhgad Road were found to be of bad quality. Worms were found in the khichdi mix.
Archana Navgire, a relative of a kid, who found the worms in the food packet, voiced her concern on X (formerly Twitter) and also reached the authorities regarding the matter.
"My nephew is enrolled in an Anganwadi at Sinhgad Road and kids are susceptible and can fall sick after consuming the expired food material. The packets of these foods had an expiry date of 120 days but when we opened the packets they had worms and were not fit to consume. We want the authorities to take strict action against those responsible for distributing expired food packets," Navgire said.
Sandeep Kale, NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) leader, wrote a letter to the Divisional Deputy Commissioner, Women and Child Development Department and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) notifying the authorities that the food packets given by the government under the mid-day meal scheme to the kids are of poor quality and are not fit to consume.
The letter reads, "The food given to children is unfit and can't be consumed. The authorities are playing with the lives of young children. Who will take responsibility if a child gets poisoned or dies? The concerned contractor's license should be terminated, all the packets given to the Anganwadi centres should be recalled and an order should be given immediately that the distributed packets should not be used. If no strict action is taken, we will hold the commissioner responsible for any mishap. We urge the authorities to take strict action against the contractor."
On the condition of anonymity, a worker from the centre said, "The khichdi that the government distributes is spicy as it's premixed and we can't feed that to a six-month-old child. The Anganwadi workers and concerned parents even voiced this concern to the heads but nothing has been done. Nobody takes this khichdi. And if we can keep good food then obviously student strength will also increase and there will be no case of malnutrition."
Rupali Khapre, FDA inspector, said, "We collected the samples and have sent them to the labs, and Suresh Annapure, joint commissioner, FDA, Pune division, will take the call on this matter."
The Free Press Journal tried to contact Annapure, but couldn't get a response.
