To eliminate bogus attendance and plug out leakages in the implementation of Mid-Day Meal (MDM) scheme, the HRD Ministry is going to launch a mobile monitoring system (MMS) by August. The project named Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) will ensure effective execution of the scheme across the country.
The project, envisioned during the erstwhile UPA government, is now in the final stage. The IVRS will be based on daily monitoring system (DMS) and is being devised by the National Informatics Centre (NIC).
“The prime objective behind launching the IVRS is to check corruption rampant in the MDM scheme. It has come to notice that several schools are maintaining bogus records. They make fake entries of children, taking food under the MDM plan, which needs to be resolved with <g data-gr-id="51">foolproof</g> mechanism. IVRS is the best way to deal with such practice,” said a state official, who had attended the Project Approval Board (PAB) meeting held recently.
“In the PAB meeting, states heads were tasked to collect mobile numbers of teachers or in-charges of the MDM scheme, which will be submitted to the NIC to prepare a database for the purpose,” said the official, requesting not to be named.
The ministry has roped in NIC, the government’s arm to provide technical assistance, to establish IVRS centres in several states.
Explaining the functioning of IVRS, the official said, “The system will be automated. Teachers will get a call from the IVRS centre on a daily basis. The computerised call would question teachers if <g data-gr-id="49">mid-day</g> meal has been served in their school. The teachers would be given <g data-gr-id="47">an option</g> to press ‘one’ or ‘zero’. On pressing <g data-gr-id="46">‘one</g>’, they would be asked to give the number of students who had the meal. After providing the input, the data will be automatically sent to <g data-gr-id="44">main</g> data centre.”
“In case the meal has not been served, teachers will get five options, mentioning reasons for not serving the food such as no stock, no money, unavailability of cook, school closed, etc,” said the official, who has initiated the data collection process.
The ministry has floated tenders for the selection of a nodal agency. The nodal agency will set up its centres in states and collect data on a daily basis, which would be shared with the HRD ministry. After <g data-gr-id="41">vetting</g> out the data, the ministry will put key details in <g data-gr-id="38">public</g> domain.