Primary school teachers in Gujarat have reportedly been assigned responsibility for monitoring meal distribution centres under the Shramik Annapurna Yojana, adding another administrative duty to an already expanding list of non-teaching tasks, according to a report by Gujarat Samachar – Ahmedabad.
The report says teachers have been made nodal officers for meal distribution centres operated under the Shramyogi Kalyan Board’s Shramik Annapurna Yojana. Their reported responsibilities include overseeing whether workers receive meals, along with related data entry, portal updates, reporting and administrative submissions.
The supplied report does not include the government order, departmental circular or notification through which the appointments were made. It also does not identify the officials or department that issued the instruction. The reported assignment therefore requires confirmation from the Gujarat government or the relevant labour and education authorities before it can be treated as formally established.
According to the report, the new duty comes on top of several other non-academic responsibilities that primary school principals and teachers are already required to perform. These include reporting on government schemes, surveys, bill submissions, election-related work, voter-list revisions and census-related tasks.
The report presents the development as part of a broader concern over the administrative workload placed on government-school teachers. It argues that time spent on online work, paperwork, data management and scheme administration can reduce the time available for classroom teaching. It also links the issue to reported shortages of teachers in schools.
The institutional question is not limited to whether teachers can carry out an additional assignment. It concerns how responsibilities are divided between departments when a welfare programme requires field-level monitoring. A meal distribution scheme for workers would ordinarily require an operational structure covering centre management, beneficiary records, attendance or distribution data, payment and bill processing, grievance handling and inspection. The supplied report does not establish which agency is responsible for these functions or whether teachers are expected to perform all of them.
The report says the appointment has triggered anger in education circles, particularly because teachers are being moved away from their primary role of teaching children. However, it does not provide named statements from teacher organisations, school representatives, parents or government officials. The scale of the reported appointments, the number of centres affected and the number of teachers involved are also not specified.
This missing information is important for assessing the policy’s practical effect. A limited monitoring role, conducted periodically and supported by dedicated administrative staff, would have different implications from a continuing responsibility involving daily supervision, digital reporting and bill processing. The supplied material does not clarify the frequency, duration or scope of the reported duty.
The issue also raises a broader administrative concern for public education. When school staff are repeatedly assigned work for programmes managed by other departments, the formal responsibility may remain with the parent department while the operational burden shifts to classrooms. That arrangement can make accountability difficult to track unless orders clearly define duties, staffing, reporting lines and safeguards for teaching time.
The Gujarat government and the relevant authorities have not been quoted in the supplied report responding to the assignment or explaining how it will affect classroom operations. Confirmation of the alleged order, the precise role of teachers and the arrangements for monitoring meal centres would be necessary to establish the facts. Until that documentation or an on-record official response is available, the reported appointment should be treated as an allegation requiring verification.
