Mid-day meal staffs will stop cooking food from Friday

Team Udayavani, Feb 9, 2018, 1:19 PM IST

Bengaluru: Over one lakh Mid-day meal staffs staged a protest in front of the Vidhana Soudha on Thursday demanding for a pay hike but the state government did not express any response. Agitated by this, the Mid-day meal staffs are now threatening to stop cooking across the state from Friday, depriving lakh of students of their lunch.

Ms Varalakshmi S, president of the Karnataka State Midday Meals Workers’ Association stated that no representative of the education department or Minister Tanveer Sait has said anything and so they are left with no choice but to stop cooking the mid-day meals across the state from Friday.

She also explained that midday meal workers start their day at around 9.30 am and work for nearly seven hours afterwards; besides cooking they do a lot of other work like washing utensils and sweeping school campuses for which they are not paid.

Currently they are paid a salary of just Rs 2,200 with the state contributing Rs 1600 and the Centre, Rs 600.

The traffic was interrupted on Thursday because of the protest march from Majestic. The railway station was surrounded with tight security as thousands of the Mid-day meal staffs arrived on trains from across the state to participate in the protest. 600 police personnel were deployed to manage the fuming workers. As many as 10 KSRP platoons, 50 sub-inspectors, 10 inspectors and three assistant commissioners of police along with constables stood guard outside the railway staatiuon for safety measures.