Govt to spend USD 50 mn on anganwadi centres

SHILLONG:

The state government will spend about 50 million dollars for construction of 273 and upgrade of over 2200 anganwadi centres across the state.

This was informed after a two-day review meeting chaired by the Social Welfare minister, Paul Lyngdoh, on Tuesday.

The review meeting on implementation of the various central schemes was held after a gap of nearly five years.

The discussion also revolved around the need to appoint professionals in the department.

Addressing the media, Lyngdoh said one of the major weaknesses of the department is the lack of professional hands to prepare detailed project reports (DPRs) and also to prepare utilisation certificates (UCs) on time.

“Therefore, there is a felt need to engage professionals who can liaise with the ministries in Delhi to facilitate early and prompt clearance of the various schemes, which are stuck due to our inability to meet the timeline,” he said.

Principal Secretary in charge of the department, Sampath Kumar, said this is because the Social Welfare department reports to five central ministries that include Ministry of Women and Child Development, Ministry of Social Justice, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Ministry of Minority Affairs and also sometimes DoNER.

“We have a small directorate. That is why strengthening of the directorate is going to happen. The directorate will be given some professional support so that it will be able to properly liaise properly with the ministry so that do not lose out in terms of the resources we can actually access.”

Kumar also informed that the government has decided to construct and upgrade the anganwadi centres, which cover over 6 lakh children,  on a priority mission.

“About 50 million dollars is being currently earmarked for upgrade and construction of these anganwadi centres,” he said while adding “as I said loan agreement has to be signed as we envisioned (doing this) through the ADB project besides additional funds available under MGNERGS.”

According to him, the decision has been taken after taking into consideration that one of the main challenges faced by such centres is infrastructure.

“Therefore, the department in collaboration with the C&RD department did a joint inspection of all the anganwadi centres in the state and based on that it was found that 273 centres need to be condemned and new centres have to be constructed. Over 2290 centres need upgrading, ” he said.

On the decision to strengthen the human resources, Kumar said, “Decision has been taken to extend the entire project area under ICDS to the new (14) blocks by providing dedicated human resources like appointment of a CDPO and support system. Meghalaya has ICDS centres in 41 out of 55 blocks.”

He also added that deputy commissioners have been asked to come up with a proposal to set up new anganwadi centres in over 1500 uncovered villages.

“We also need to recruit new lady supervisors in those areas. There has been a lot of discussion on how to build and  strengthen it, ” he said.

With regard to the Integrated Child Protection Services (ICPS), which seeks to provide support to children who are in conflict with law and who need care and protection, the principal secretary said, “One of the decisions taken was that we requested the district teams to come up with identified lands to construct homes for the children.”

“Besides that, we also discussed on DREAM on how we can make Meghalaya a drug-free state, and how to reduce the substance intake. DREAM is going to the communities, where communities are taking the initiative to set up drug rehabilitation centres, so that process is also going to be initiated,” he asserted while adding that the department has also set a timeline for every task.