The State government has embarked upon yet another welfare scheme envisaging provision of breakfast for all school going children from first to tenth standard.
The scheme will be implemented for all students studying in government, local bodies and other schools. The ‘Chief Minister’s Breakfast Scheme’ will be operational from Vijaya Dasami, October 24.
Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has announced the scheme as Dasara gift to students and the initiative was aimed at providing students with nutritional food along with quality education in the schools. According to orders issued by Education Secretary Vakati Karuna on Friday, the Government gave top most priority to the welfare of women and children and several schemes had been launched since the formation of the State which resulted in transformational change in the social and health indicators.
To address the nutritional status of school going children and alleviate the burden on working mothers, the government had decided to provide breakfast to school children. The Education department had been asked to furnish an action plan in this direction. The Director of School Education had been asked to formulate the action plan soon so that the scheme could be launched by Vijaya Dasami.
According to officials, the scheme was formulated after a team of officials visited Tamil Nadu where a similar scheme was operational. The team studied the implementation of the scheme and observed that it was being implemented for students at primary education level. The Chief Minister however announced that the scheme should be implemented for all schools without taking expenditure as a consideration.
Officials said the full scale implementation of the scheme would entail ₹400 crore expenditure to the State exchequer annually.
