CUTTACK: THE State Government’s Special Nutrition Programme (SNP) which was launched with an aim to providing a healthy diet to check malnutrition has taken a beating in Cuttack district due to lack of infrastructure.
While most of the anganwadi centres are functioning without a building affecting the distribution of nutritious food, shortage of workers has crippled the supplementary nutrition programme and pre-school education programme under Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in the district.
As per reports, there are 3,318 anganwadi centres in the district, which comprises of 14 blocks. Cuttack city alone has 390 centres. Of them, the Government has so far sanctioned funds for construction of own building to 1954 anganwadis.
While construction of 1102 centres has been completed, work on 461 centres is in progress and work on the rest 391 centres is yet to start. Of the total, 1048 centres have their own building, 1456 centres are functioning from different schools and 585 centres are operating from community centres and nearly 172 are running from rented facilitates. The vacancies have only crippled SNP programme further with posts of anganwadis lying vacant in 55 centres since long.
Intellectuals have opined that Anganwadi centres play a vital role in a child’s learning and nutrition process and the Government must ensure that they function from proper buildings with adequate infrastructure.