'45 lakh anganwadi centres sans toilets, drinking water facilities'
Source: The Sangai Express / PTI
New Delhi, March 10 2018:
About a third of total 13.6 lakh anganwadi centres have neither toilets nor drinking water facilities, according to a Parliamentary panel report tabled today.
Anganwadi centres are part of the Centre's Integrated Child Development Scheme and provide a package of six services-supplementary nutrition, referral services, immunisation, health checkup, pre-school non-formal education and health and nutrition education- to women and children.
"Among the constraints, the Secretary (of the Women and Child Development Ministry) informed that there were still around 4.5 lakh anganwadi centres that lacked both drinking water and toilet facilities," according to the department-related Parliamentary standing committee report on HRD.
It adds that nearly 25 per cent of anganwadi centres don't have drinking water facilities and 36 per cent of these don't have toilets.
"In Manipur only 21 per cent AWCs have drinking water facilities followed by ArP (28.51 percent), Uttarakhand (29.04 per cent), Karnataka (38.76 per cent), Telangana (40.21 per cent), J and K (48.18 per cent) and Maharashtra (53.47 per cent)," as per the report.
Similarly, in Telanagana only 21.30 per cent AWCs have toilets, followed by Manipur (27.05 per cent), Jharkhand (38.74 per cent), Andhra Prade.sh (43.93 per cent), J and K (44.11 per cent), Assam (47.51 per cent), Arunachal Pradesh (48.73 per cent) and Odisha (52.64 pc) .
The report mentions that the under the revised Anganwadi services, the Ministry plans to build 70,000 toilets and provide drinking water facilities in 2,000 AWCs.
Rs 54.14 crore and Rs 13.24 crore have been released to various States.