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Published : 10 Jul 2026, 11:17 AM
Complaints have surfaced over the quality of bread, bananas and eggs served under the government's school feeding programme in Gopalganj's Kotalipara and Kashiani Upazilas.
Under the programme, students at government primary schools are given milk, eggs, bananas, buns and biscuits.
Teachers and students say the buns often arrive hard and tasteless, the boiled eggs come cracked or broken, and the bananas are either too raw or overripe, with everything undersized.
Ashraful Islam, headteacher of South Hiron Government Primary School in Kotalipara, said the bread supplied to schools comes from bakeries in Kotalipara, Bhola, Barishal and Gopalganj on different days, but the bread from outside Kotalipara arrives “smaller, less soft, and poor-tasting”.
Similar complaints came from students and teachers at Purba Barshapara Government Primary School, Chhatrakanda Primary School in Pinjuri Union, and Tupuria Government Primary School in Kushla Union.
The government runs the school feeding programme through the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education to ensure student nutrition, boost attendance and cut dropout rates.
The programme launched in November last year across 358 government primary schools in Gopalganj's two upazilas, covering 187 schools in Kotalipara and 171 in Kashiani.
Under the scheme, students receive buns and boiled eggs on Sundays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; buns and milk on Mondays; and biscuits and bananas on Tuesdays.
The government has set fixed weights for each item: 120g for buns, 100g for bananas, 60g for eggs, 200g for milk, and 75g for packets of fortified biscuits.
Fatema Khanam, assistant teacher at South Hiron school, said attendance has risen sharply since the programme began, and she expects full attendance if it continues.
Headteacher Islam said his school has 216 students, with average attendance now around 90 percent.
He said the contractor's staff deliver food for 195 students daily, but when attendance runs higher, the food falls short and has to be shared out.
Islam said attendance drops in bad weather, with leftover food then distributed among students present at the end of the day, while during exams, when nearly all students attend, food again has to be split.
He alleged that bread supplied from Bhola takes one to two days to arrive, making it comparatively harder, less soft and poorer in taste, and said bread previously supplied from Kotalipara was better in quality and taste.
Fourth-grader Syed Sajjad said the milk and biscuits were good, but the bread, bananas and eggs were not.
Fifth-grader Tayeba Jannat Toha said the bun sometimes arrives burnt and hard, with a bad smell and poor taste, and that cracked eggs and undersized, unripe or overripe bananas turn up occasionally.
School attendant Munshi Masum Billah said he personally screens the eggs, bananas and bread from the contractor's supplier, but cracked or broken eggs still turn up, bananas take two days to ripen, and mould sometimes appears in the bread, leaving it inedible for students.
Md Kamruzzaman, headteacher of Purba Barshapara Government Primary School, said food is supplied to cover roughly 90 percent of average attendance, with eggs meant to weigh 60g, bananas 100g and buns 120g, though the actual weights often fall short.
He said banana quality was the worst of the lot, and that the school frequently returns food.
Headteacher of Paranpur Government Primary School in Kashiani, said the food falls short of full quality standards and called for stronger oversight from the regulating authority, along with more care and sincerity from the supplier.
Md Selim Hossain of food supplier Grameen Jana Unnayan Sangstha, which runs the programme across six districts including Gopalganj, said flagged items are swapped out immediately.
According to him, substandard or mouldy bread is never knowingly supplied, with bread prepared under the supervision of chemists and nutritionists.
He added shortfalls in egg and banana weights are corrected through replacement or extra supply, and further complaints would prompt a change of suppliers if needed.
Kotalipara Upazila Primary Education Officer Shekhar Ranjan Vokto acknowledged the bread was "somewhat hard and less tasty”, saying supply from Kotalipara's Loknath Bakery had been softer, but an inspection found unsatisfactory conditions there and supply was halted until further notice.
He said steps were under way to fix the egg and banana issues, with schools told to return any substandard food.
