Chennai, 12 Oct (H.S.): Tamil Nadu BJP leader Nainar Nagenthran has urged the government to reconsider its decision to make teachers monitor school breakfast and midday meal programmes, warning that additional duties would burden staff already struggling with teacher shortages.

In a post on X, Nagenthran criticised the government order requiring a teacher in each school to be designated as a “monitoring teacher” for both schemes. He said the arrangement was inappropriate given the staffing constraints facing government schools.

He claimed that more than 18,000 teaching posts remained vacant across over 40,000 government and government-aided schools in Tamil Nadu. Citing the UDISE+ report for the 2025-26 academic year, he said 3,957 government schools were operating with just one teacher.

These shortages had already increased the responsibilities of serving teachers, he argued. Assigning them the additional task of checking breakfast and midday meal quality would make it harder to balance teaching with administrative and supervisory work.

Nagenthran questioned how teachers working under constant pressure could manage further responsibilities without compromising the attention they give students. He said the government should recognise the limits of their workload instead of treating them like machines.

The BJP leader also criticised Chief Minister Vijay for expanding the breakfast programme from Classes I-V to Class VIII without adequately examining the practical challenges involved.

He urged the Chief Minister to stop imposing additional work on existing teachers and immediately fill vacancies in government schools. Strengthening staffing, he said, would help teachers devote adequate time to classroom instruction and student welfare.

Nagenthran further demanded a fresh government order assigning separate teachers to supervise the breakfast and midday meal programmes, instead of placing responsibility for both schemes on one teacher.

His remarks focused on the impact of the monitoring arrangement on teachers and the need to address staff shortages before increasing their responsibilities.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Arun Lakshman