Mid-day meal app eases record keeping for teachers

Archit Watts

Tribune News Service

Malout, January 22

The Mid-Day Meal (MDM) mobile application, introduced by the Education Department, has brought effective results and decreased the burden of teachers.

With this app, the daily reporting of mid-day meal has become much easier for school staff. Further, there is no need of registers to maintain the record now.

Giving details, Malkit Singh, District Education Officer (DEO), Muktsar, said “Under this project, a user ID and password is given to the teacher in-charge of the programme in primary and upper primary schools that provide mid-day meal. The strength of students is already uploaded in the mobile app due to its linkage with e-Punjab portal. No extra work is required and the in-charge staff member needs to just upload the figure of present students on the app on a particular day and submit the data to server. This app is very helpful in maintaining the stock register and balance sheet.”

He said “Therefore, in future, there will be no requirement of register and the whole record will be maintained online. Muktsar is the first district in state to have implemented the project in all schools and the daily report is being uploaded on the MDM app.”

The headmaster of a government primary school said now, teachers had enough time to teach and the report was being sent just by a click. “It was a time-consuming exercise. This app has eased the teachers’ work. We have to add initial stocks once and then the addition of stocks is required only when new funds or grains are allotted to school. Only the students’ strength is to be uploaded on the app daily,” he added.

Rahul Bakshi, district co-ordinator of mid-day meal scheme, said there were 557 schools where MDM scheme had been implemented, including 329 primary and 228 upper primary schools. He said, “There are 37,099 primary school students and 25,996 upper primary students who consume the mid-day meal in government schools in the district daily”.

He said 100-gm food- grains for primary and 150-gm foodgrains are provided for upper primary students by the state government to prepare meal.

“The government also provides cooking costs at Rs 4.35 per primary student and Rs 6.51 per upper primary student. Besides this, 1,396 cooks-cum-helpers were also deployed in these schools to cook and serve nutritional and hygienic meal to students,” Bakshi added.

557 schools covered under the scheme

• The MDM scheme has been implemented in 557 schools, including 329 primary and 228 upper primary schools.  
• There are 37,099 primary school students and 25,996 upper primary students who consume the mid-day meal in government schools in the district daily. 
• Around 100-gm foodgrains for primary and 150-gm foodgrains are provided for upper primary students by the state government to prepare meal.

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