AURANGABAD: A total of 17,000 children in the age group of 0 to 5 in the district have been found to be malnourished.
The high number of malnourished children has raised questions on the quality of the mid-day meal being provided to the children from the Anganwadis.
The district has 3,425 Anganwadis.
These Aganwadis provide mid-day meals to 2.28 lakh kids in the age group of 0 to 5 years in the district.
Recently, Maharashtra Government had ordered Anganwadi workers to check weight of the children.
According to a report submitted by the Aangawadis, 2.19 lakh children were weighed and out of them, 2.2 lakh kids were in normal weight category, while 13,950 children were under low weight category and 3,144 children under severely low weight category.
The kids falling under the medium and low weight category were considered as malnourished, the report said.
On the other hand, the state government runs various schemes, which provide food and health facilities to the children.
Despite this, the number of malnourished children does not seem to decrease.
Last year the number of malnourished children was about 16,000.
Similarly, the kids tend to lose weight during summer season due to lack of intake of enough water and food.