Our Spl Correspondent
NEW DELHI: What should be the cost of one nutritious meal for the malnourished children and expectant mothers under a Government-run programme?
Believe it or not, in Meghalaya it is only five rupees per day per head and the Anganwari workers and helpers who prepare and serve the meals are paid even less.
It is an irony that under the now famous ICDS programme, Meghalaya and other states spend this precariously low amount for the vulnerable population.
Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) is dubbed as world’s most unique programme for early childhood development through nutritious meals, but the funds allocated for this scheme is abysmally low and the Anganwari workers, considered to be backbone of this mega scheme, are paid the least in Meghalaya.
Minister for Women and Child Development, J A Lyngdoh, who attended one conference on this programme recently said that on an average not more than five rupees is sanctioned for supplementary nutrition for malnourished children, nursing and pregnant mothers per head per day which is dismal.
Ironically, the sanctioned sum includes cost of condiments, transportation and even firewood.
“This is very low and inadequate to meet quality nutritive value given prevailing high prices due to increasing inflation,” Lyngdoh said, while urging the Centre to increase the same to a logical amount.
“With five rupees fund only one hot meal with some vegetables can be given to the children and mothers,” he said.
In the Northeast, Meghalaya and Manipur pay only between Rs 100 to Rs 300 per month to Anganwari workers and only Rs 50 to helpers. But Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram pay nothing additional to workers though every state was expected to top up with Rs 1,000 for a worker and Rs 750 for a helper, taking their overall salary to Rs 4,000 and Rs 2,000 respectively.
As if that was not enough, as many as 11 states do not consider an Anganwari worker and a helper’s worth more than Rs 400 a month. They make no additional payments to these workers who must manage with the salary the Centre provides.
Since ICDS is a centrally-sponsored scheme implemented through the states, bulk of the monthly salaries come from the Centre, which recently revised the Anganwari worker’s monthly salary from Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000 and a helper’s salary from Rs 750 to Rs 1,500.
Launched way back in 1975, the ICDS has covered 7.6 million expectant and nursing mothers and over 36 million children through the services of Anganwari workers and helpers, who have a target to achieve six goals of child health and nutrition. The goal is basically to respond to the challenge of providing pre-school education on one hand and breaking the vicious cycle of malnutrition, morbidity reduced learning capacity and mortality.
But even after all these years, the condition of Anganwari workers and helpers remains pitiful. Most states do not compensate them for their services let alone improve the infrastructure at Anganwari centres. Over 60 per cent Anganwaris did not have safe drinking water sources and were depending on non-treated water while only 40 per cent had toilets.
Although a major duty of the worker is preparation of meals for children daily, a whopping 75 per cent Anganwari centres do not have kitchen facilities and cooked food is often left exposed to hazardous materials.
Anganwari workers are overburdened, underpaid and mostly unskilled and they are asked to perform works of other agencies often without extra payments.