CM Yogi’s historic step towards improving the nutrition and health of children

Lucknow| Yogi government has decided to provide nutritious snacks along with nutritious food for the overall development of basic and junior high school children of the state. These nutritious snacks will be given to children under a special weekly nutrition program. This includes peanut chikki, millet laddus and roasted gram etc. Yogi government has taken initiative to make the mid-day meal scheme more effective and beneficial. This initiative will play an important role in promoting the physical and mental development of children.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, in a high-level meeting, has directed officials to provide nutritious snacks every Thursday to basic and junior high school children under the special weekly nutrition program from November. Under PM Poshan Yojana, nutritious food is being provided to 1.74 crore students of classes 1 to 8 in the state. Through this scheme, children are being given 100 to 150 grams of food grains every day.

In this sequence, keeping in mind the nutrition of children, he has given instructions to include food items like mill laddus, millet laddus, peanut chikki, roasted gram in the scheme. Yogi government will spend about Rs 95 crore for this. 3.72 lakh cooks have been appointed across the state to provide the benefit of nutritious snacks to the students. They are being given an honorarium of Rs 2,000 each month and Rs 500 for uniform once a year.

Apart from this, regular training is also being given to the cooks, so that they can prepare nutritious and tasty food for the children. This step has been taken to ensure the quality of the scheme and provide better services to the cooks.

In the meeting, CM Yogi has given instructions to conduct digital monitoring and social audit to maintain transparency in the implementation of the scheme. This will provide correct information about the supply and use of food grains. Also, the fairness and effectiveness of the scheme can be ensured.

At present the quality of the scheme is being monitored through regular inspections in the districts, but this is not enough. In such a situation, it has been decided to do digital monitoring and social audit.