CM Vijay Launches Expansion of Breakfast Scheme for School Children
About 15.30 lakh additional students, in classes six to eight, studying in 15,454 government and state-aided schools will be benefited, officials said
Chennai: Expanding the free breakfast scheme to cover students up to Class 8 by bringing in 15.30 lakh more beneficiaries into it at an additional expenditure of Rs 217.63 crore and taking the total cost Rs 724 crore, Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay named the welfare programme after Congress leader and former Chief Minister ‘Perunthalaivar’ K Kamaraj.
Inaugurating the revised scheme at a government middle school in Thiruvanmiyur, Vijay, dressed in a shimmering silk dhoti and cream colour shirt, partook of his breakfast by sitting down with the students, sharing pleasantries with them and even pouring water into the glass of a boy next to him.
One of the most talked about existing government welfare initiatives, which was launched in 2022 to serve breakfast to government primary school students, it later on included government aided schools, too. The TVK government raised it to one more notch above to cater to students in 15,454 government and government-aided schools across the State.
The freshly cooked breakfast would help improve the nutrition of students and also relieve working mothers of the arduous task of preparing food for their children early in the morning before starting to work.
The roots of the programme serving free food in schools go back to the Justice Party era under British rule, when a meal programme was introduced at a Corporation school in the then Madras Presidency in 1920.
K Kamaraj, when he was the Congress Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, expanded the programme even as he contributed to the development of education by opening schools.
Many years later, Chief Minister M G Ramachandran launched the Nutritious Meal Scheme in schools to serve lunch for students, which was supported by international aid agencies like UNICEF.
The breakfast scheme was launched in 2022 for primary school students with a view to ensuring that no student attended classes on an empty stomach, which in turn led to an increase in school attendance. Vijay has extended it to middle-school students.
An official press release said the serving of breakfast in schools would help students concentrate on their studies and strengthen the educational foundation of the State and its expansion would help the state. In the government middle school in Thiruvanmiyur where Vijay launched the scheme alone the number of beneficiaries had gone up to 199 from the erstwhile figure of 127 when it was confined to the primary classes alone the release said..
Naming the scheme after Kamaraj has also made the TVK government more popular in the State and TNCC president Manickam Tagore had specially praised the move, indicating a strengthening of ties between the political allies.
