All Manipur Mid-day Meal Workers’ Union on Monday served an ultimatum to Education Minister Thounaojam Basanta to clear pending honorarium for 15 months within 10 days.
The union in its memorandum submitted to the minister drew his attention towards the plight and demanded release of the pending honorarium and hiking the monthly honorarium amount.
It said that the scheme presently covered over 1.7 lakh students of as many as 3,369 government as well as government aided schools. Around 7,000 mid-day meal workers are engaged in cooking and serving the meal.
However, a monthly honorarium of only Rs 1,000 is being given to the workers in Manipur. The amount is the lowest in India when some states even started giving an honorarium of Rs 10,000 to its mid-day meal workers, it highlighted.
It further alleged that although the Centre regularly sanctions the honorarium regularly the state government is not releasing it.
Despite the challenges confronting the mid-day meal workers, they have been dedicating their time and energy to ensure that the students do not go hungry. The memorandum called the attention of the Education Minister to increase the state share and provide a minimum honorarium of Rs 6,000 to the cooks.
It also cautioned that the union will cease work and stop cooking food from the 11th day if the demand for clearing the pending honorarium is not fulfilled within 10 days.
Meanwhile, speaking to the media after submitting the memorandum, Union Secretary Arambam Thoi said that the education minister gave his assurance to disburse the pending honorarium for 10 months within a few days.
She said that the union was also assured of looking into hiking the honorarium.
She expressed gratitude to the minister for agreeing to their demands and also positivity that the assurances will be translated into action at the earliest.
