<B>A plea for a hot meal</B>

Cassam Uteem returns to the fray. He insists on the necessity of providing needy children with a nutritious mid-day meal in primary school – a project known as the NMPCP – and he wants the minister of Education to know it. As the budget was presented, Cassam Uteem made it clear that the abolition of the Primary School Supplementary Feeding Programme (PSSFP) would be detrimental to the children. Early this year, he wrote to the ministers of Finance and Education to make a “request to consider in its stead the introduction of a nutritious, preferably hot, mid-day meal”. Unfortunately, it seems he did not get the hoped-for reply from minister Gokhool who said, “In the present circumstances when our country is going through difficult moments, we are relying on the sense of responsibility and solidarity of all Mauritians to contribute within their capacity to reinforce/supplement government’s efforts ”. He invited the former President to “initiate some action at your level in the direction of the proposal you have made”. The reply did not take long, “I still believe that it would be possible to implement the NMPCP without additional financial burden on the government annual budget. The technicians of your ministry would be able, in less than no time, to work out the funding of the project through the abolition of the PSSFP and the establishment of a more rational scheme of free transport to students,” Cassam Uteem added.