Mangalore : The State Governments ambitious Ksheera Bhagya scheme of supplying free milk to school children, was launched on August 1, Thursday by State Minister for Forest and District in-charge Minister Ramanatha Rai at the Government school at Gandhinagar. Rai symbolically handed over milk to the children to mark the launching of the scheme.
In his address, Rai said the government has initiated this programme to fight malnutrition facing children. The government wants to see the children healthy, the minister said adding the scheme apart from benefitting students will also benefit milk unions.
BV Satyanarayana, Managing Director of DK District Co-operative Milk Producers Union said children of government schools from Class I to X and Anganavadi kids would get 150 ml of milk on alternate days of the week, i.e on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Though initially the government had planned to supply milk, now whole milk powder will be given to government school children, while Anganavadi kids would get skimmed milk powder. The project would benefit nearly 2.05 lakh children from 1431 schools in the district and 88,000 Anganavadi kids from 2102 centres, he said.
Raviraj Hegde, President of DK District Co-operative Milk Union, presided over the function. N Prakash, Deputy Commissioner, Shashidhar Hegde, Corporator and several others were present at the function.