In what may be considered a shocking piece of news, as many as 25 students were admitted to hospital on Friday after eating the Mid-day meal in a Government Primary school in the town of Kadiri, Sri Satya Sai district, Andhra Pradesh.
Going into the details, the AP Government has been supplying lunch for both Primary and Secondary Government school students to aid their malnutrition and make them healthy. In this regard, students were served stale food the other day for which they complained to the Principal. By the time the school principal asked the caterers to cook fresh food, already 25 children had the meals and suffered vomiting followed by stomach pain. Immediately they got shifted to the local government hospital and given treatment. The District Educational Officer SV Krishna Reddy rushed to the hospital and spoke to students and later declared to the Press that all the students were stable and will be out of the hospital in a couple of days. The DEO also promised a detailed investigation of the mishap that happened at the school to everyone.
It is a common practice that the state governments give the contract to 3rd party caterers who supply food to the schools. It is their negligence and bad quality that affected 25 students and made them ill. Not just this, but incidents like such have happened many times in a recent couple of years in Andhra Pradesh and one cannot help but blame the corrupt contractors who fail to get the best service to the students.