BHUBANESWAR : After a long wait over fund constraints, administrative delays and land unavailability, over 20,000 anganwadi centres (AWCs) functioning from different premises in Odisha will soon operate from their own buildings.
The state government has decided to take up the construction of buildings for the remaining AWCs in a mission mode approach to ensure supplementary nutrition, health check-ups and early childhood education for children, pregnant women and lactating mothers.
Of the 74,224 AWCs in the state, 54,074 are now functioning from their own buildings but 20,150 centres lack their own infrastructure. While 4,574 centres are operating from school premises, 10,469 from community centres and 3,890 from rented accommodations, buildings for 7,389 AWCs are under construction.
Although the state government had initially set the deadline to complete the construction of all anganwadi buildings by 2019, sources said, issues related to availability of land for the buildings, adequate funds for construction and administrative lethargy led to the inordinate delay.
Earlier, the unit cost for an anganwadi building was fixed at Rs 5.5 lakh, which was later revised to Rs 7 lakh and then to Rs 12 lakh. With rising construction costs and the need for faster project delivery, the state government has now increased the cost to Rs 15 lakh per unit.
“In 2016, the state had 71,306 AWCs and 28,187 among them had their own buildings. The target then was to complete all AWCs in next three years for which Rs 2,377 crore was needed. It was later decided to take up the centres in phases due to lack of adequate funds and land-related issues,” said sources.
After deputy chief minister Pravati Parida recently informed the Assembly that the Women and Child Development department will independently fund the construction of the remaining AWC buildings, the Panchayati Raj and Drinking Water department, which is facilitating land and monitoring the work, has asked districts to complete the buildings in advanced stages, on priority.
Of the 1,993 buildings that were targeted for completion by October 15, around 1,461 AWCs have been constructed so far. For AWCs where land identification remains pending, the collectors have been asked to ensure that a monthly review is conducted by the sub-collector concerned in presence of BDO, tehsildar, DSWO and CDPO to monitor the progress of land identification and resolve related issues at the field level.
Director of special projects Siddharth Shankar Swain has informed the collectors that the sanctioned AWC projects with available land which have not progressed due to non-initiation of tender processes or lack of participation from bidders, will be taken up under the revised scheme at the enhanced unit cost.