Akshaya Patra to provide meals for Bengaluru civic workers from November

Akshaya Patra Foundation, a not-for-profit organization has proposed to provide meals to over 28,000 civic workers who work hard to keep the city clean.

“It is a first ever initiative for civic workers in India,” said G Padmavathi— Bengaluru Mayor. “From November 2016, the workers will be served with rice and sambar four days in a week. For other three days, they will get bisibele bath, palau and rice bath. Each meal will cost us Rs 20, and it will be supplied at 10am every day.” The civic body will provide plates and glasses to the pourakarmikas, she added.

“Eliminating hunger is possible. We can build a world where each person, everywhere has access to healthy food – if all of us work together, as cohorts,” said G Padmavathi.

For the first time ever, in its 2016-17 Budget, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) assigned Rs 10 crore for providing midday meals to pourakarmikas, majority of whom are hired by the private contractors.

Akshaya Patra, an initiative of ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) runs the world’s largest school lunch programme. With the aim of eliminating hunger, the organization cooks and supplies midday meals to over 1.84 lakh schoolchildren in Bengaluru alone.

In July’2016, ET had reported that Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) was planning to collaborate with Akshaya Patra to supply meals to civic workers in the city. “Our logistics network is already prepared in all the 198 municipal wards. We just need to understand how we can merge this with our school lunch programme,” said Vinay N Kumar, Akshaya Patra’s head of operations (Bengaluru, Ballari, Lucknow and Vrindavan).