Taking a serious view of the issues raised by ICCW about anganwadi workers and trainers not paid for months, Women and Child Development (WCD) Minister Maneka Gandhi today said her ministry will write to the states which are not making timely payments.
In a meeting with Gandhi, members of Indian Council for Child Welfare (ICCW), the umbrella body of NGOs and non-profit organisations working for child welfare, highlighted several problems being faced by them including low honorarium given to creche workers and helpers, difficulty in setting up of creches in conflict areas, outstanding payments to anganwadi trainers by the state governments among others.
Gandhi said the training of anganwadi workers was not meeting the expected standards even as she flayed the state governments for adopting "careless and irresponsible" attitude in payments of these workers.
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"The training of anganwadi workers is also not up to the mark as they lack in knowledge about cleanliness, hygiene and good quality food to children.
"It is a serious matter that the state governments are adopting a careless and irresponsible attitude towards making timely payments to Anganwadi workers and trainers for the services rendered by them," she said in an official statement.
She also asked ICCW members to submit a formal representation to the ministry giving details of issues and action needed so that the matter could be taken up with the Finance Ministry as well as with the state governments.
Meanwhile, Gandhi said malnutrition has been building-up because the institutions providing services to children have been going down systematically for the last many years and there is now an urgent need to revamp it.
She further asked the members of ICCW, which runs 5,300 creches in 450 districts of the country, to study the map of severe malnutrition areas and formulate a strategy to deal with it.
