Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) is among the prestigious scheme of the Union Government floated in the country with the sole purpose of providing nutritious food to the children between the age of 6 – 8 years belonging to the BPL segment or in other words the poorest of the poor. The scheme envisaged that nutritious food was needed to the under-nourished children so that when they grow, they are healthy people capable of doing hard work for the country and the family.
This scheme of great social importance is becoming a failure in our State. The Union Government provides 300 crore rupees annually for the Anganwari Centres through which the scheme is operated in the length and breadth of the State. But owing to callousness of the functionaries, lack of accountability and total insensitivity to the requirements of the society, the aforementioned amount remains unutilized and the scheme becomes a flop. The Centre has been frugally allocating funds for the purpose but alas, the SWD in the State has made a joke of the entire scheme. For last two years, no supplies have been made to the centres and as a result of this children have begun to leave the Anganwari Centres. The parents complain that the much touted supply of nutritious food by the Government has remained a distant dream. The reason why hundreds of Anganwari Centres in Jammu, which is the hard hit region of collapsing ICDS programme, have become cesspool of inefficiency and perhaps corruption. The purchasing system has been made so complicated and multi-tiered as it has almost become impossible for the contractors to perform even when they are desirous of rendering honest services. Inefficiency and incompetence of the departmental functionaries can be gauged from the fact that all the 800 Anganwari Centres in District Samba are running dry for last two years. This is just because the District Heads (Programme Officers) of the ICDS Projects of Social Welfare Department, across the State failed to make purchases of nutrition items and ensure supplies to the thousands of Anganwari Centres. The FCI rice was lifted by the department last year and issued to the ICDS Centres but without pulses, nutri, grams, recipe items, edible oil, salt, turmeric etc. Does rice alone make the nutritious diet one may ask? What a misfortune that 14,500 Anganwari Centres in Jammu region go dry.
As we are reflecting on this subject, it will be reminded that only last week the DE came out with the shocking news that the inspections teams which the DC of Rajouri had directed to conduct on spot inspection of Anganwari Centres in the district reported that most of 1800 Anganwari Centres were dysfunctional and either closed down or the staff was invisible in the Centre. This served as the whistle blower and now we have the shocking news that for two years in the past, most of the Anganwari Centres are going dry. In view of this, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) remains bogged with criminal inaction and dereliction of duty. The Chief Minister would be well advised to immediately call from the Minister concerned a status report on the subject and propose urgent measures to stop the slide down of the this branch of the Department because it pertains to the poorer and weaker sections of society.
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