Workers have been asked to wash utensils in which students are served food Manav Mander Ludhiana, November 11 Midday meal workers, who are already struggling with meagre honorarium, have now been asked to clean utensils as well. Additional work has been imposed on them but the Education Department has failed to announce any hike in their monthly honorarium. This has come as a double whammy for workers who are already working under a lot of stress. Midday week workers are paid Rs 1,700 for 10 months. Earlier, they only used to wash the utensils in which food was cooked, but now they have been asked to clean the utensils in which students eat food according to a circular issued recently. At present, every school has a different arrangement for getting the utensils cleaned. Enquiries revealed that in some schools, kids are cleaning their utensils themselves after having lunch; in others, it was already the midday meal workers who were cleaning the utensils; while in the rest, school heads and teachers paid extra from their pockets every month to pay the workers who were coming to clean the utensils. Sita Kumari, who is working as a midday meal worker in a government school, said she had been working as a cook from past six years but what was paid to them was peanuts. “We have been requesting the Department to increase our wages but instead of increasing our allowance, they have increased our work sans any additional allowance. We are three cooks in the school for around 300 students. This means that cooks will end up cleaning utensils of around 100 students each, that too without any money for the labour. This is extremely unfair,” she said. Another midday meal worker, Surinder Kaur, said at present, the mid day meal workers were cleaning the utensils in the school but were being paid extra amount for the same by the school. “Now that a circular has been issued stating that we would be cleaning the utensils, we are worried that the school might stop paying us extra,” she added. Sukhdir Sekhon, head of a government school, said: “There is no harm in children cleaning their own utensils as it infuses a sense of responsibility in them. Our school pays extra to get the utensils cleaned but asking kids to do their work themselves will help them in the long run.”

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