Mangaluru: MLC Ivan D’Souza held a press meet at his office at the MCC premises here, on January 27.
Speaking to the mediapersons, Ivan said, “We have submitted a memorandum to the Chief Minister to introduce ‘Motte Bhagya’ in the forthcoming ICDS budget and to implement it in the Mid-day meals scheme. The main objective of the mid-day meal scheme is to boost enrollment and reduce school drop-outs.”
He said that Anganwadis and mid-day meals in schools were introduced to fulfill the nutritional needs of children and to prevent hunger and malnutrition. Protein is considered the building block of the body and lack of protein results in weakness. Malnutrition among children is dangerous for a developing country like India. From the past 6 years around 50% of the children are suffering from malnutrition. Motte Bhagya will be introduced to overcome the problem of malnutrition so that every child gets nutritious food. “Children taking Vegetarian food will be given bananas,” he added.
He further said “Already Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Odisha, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and other western states of India have introduced this scheme. All the prices of essential commodities are sky rocketing.” In the memorandum, he has stressed to increase the allotment towards the scheme in ICDS budget. Other suggestions included, Rs 100crore to be reserved in the Mangalore City budget for the development of wards and around Rs 2,000 crore to be reserved for the Paschima Vahini project.” For long, tourism has been associated with the sea. Therefore certain amount of funds should be allotted for the coastal tourism development plan under the Mangalore budget to improvise Mangalore under tourism sector. The memorandum also features budgetary allotment for the development of Arecanut,” he added.
Former Mayor Shashidhar Hegde and other congress members were also present.
Is Ivan going to lay the eggs when the state can not afford to source them in the future?