Children eat the midday meal at a Government primary school, Anta Ghat, on Wednesday. Picture by Jai Prakash

Patna, July 17: The education department has not learnt its lesson even after the death of 22 children, who were served “poison” in the name of free lunch.

Today, when the entire government machinery was busy covering up the tragic incident after leaders from the opposition parties left no chance to slam the government over the incident, a government school in the heart of Patna was unaware of the incident and was found serving midday meal in unhygienic conditions.

Around 12.30pm, students at Government Primary School, Anta Ghat, were sitting in a queue to have their midday meal. A few metres from where students were having their free lunch, a heap of garbage lay with flies and mosquitoes hovering over it.

Since the school has no boundary wall, stray dogs of the locality were found digging into the meals along with the children. Today’s menu comprised khichdi and chokha (mashed potato). Only a handful of students were lucky to get the chokha.

The food at the Anta Ghat school was supplied by non-government organisation Ekta Shakti Foundation from Sampat Chak area in Patna.

Chanda Kumari, the lone teacher and principal of the school, said: “Since the food is supplied from a centralised kitchen, we have limited options of checking it. But before serving the food we do taste it.”

According to the midday meal scheme, a school has different menus for six days, comprising green vegetables, eggs and pulses. But hardly any children get green vegetables.

Mohammed Salim, a Class V student at Anta Ghat, said: “The vegetable curry that we get hardly has any vegetable. Potatoes just float in the curry. Sometimes we do find vegetables, but they are of the cheaper variety like radish.”

“I am the only teacher-cum-principal in the school. I have to look after everything. Sometimes it gets too difficult for me to shoulder so many things,” Kumari said, adding: “Apart from teaching, I also have to look ensure that children get the food on time,” the principal said.

The teacher added that she had requested senior officers of the education department to arrange for more teachers, but nothing had been done so far. The school not only has shortage of teachers, it does not even have drinking water facility. Students of the school are left with no option but to arrange water for themselves. Some arrange it from the nearby slum, while others get water from small restaurants in the area.

The Government Primary School running from classes I to V has 60 students but hardly 45 attend classes regularly.