Education Minister admits schoolchildren not getting adequate food

By Saman Indrajith

Minister of Education Susil Premajayantha yesterday admitted in Parliament that Sri Lankan schoolchildren were not receiving adequate food.Answering a question posed by Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa, the Minister said the government was trying to allocate more funds for the school mid-day meal programme. Premadasa said, “I would like to urge the government to expand the school lunch programme. We also need to conduct a survey on the nutrition of our children.”

The Opposition leader also said that there were delays in granting the Mahapolar scholarship.

“When I assumed duties, scholarship and bursary had got into arrears. But that has been rectified,” Premajayantha said.

The Minister said that a separate division had been set up to look into the nutrition levels of schoolchildren. This unit continuously monitors students and collects data, on a regular basis, he said.

“The government has allocated four billion rupees to provide lunch to schoolchildren. This comes to about 60 rupees per child per day. This is not enough. We have to at least allocate 75 rupees per student. We have earmarked another four billion rupees to provide school items to students, including shoes,” he added.

Minister Premajayantha said that they had initially allocated 4.5 billion rupees to print textbooks but the cost of printing is 16.5 billion. “Luckily China provides 70 percent of school uniforms for free,” he said.