Half of JK’s anganwadi centres without water, toilets

New Delhi, Mar 09: About a third of total 13.6 lakh anganwadi centres have neither toilets nor drinking water facilities, according to a Parliamentary panel report tabled on Friday.
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 check-up, 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 human resource development.
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 Arunachal Pradesh (28.51 per cent), Uttarakhand (29.04 per cent), Karnataka (38.76 per cent), Telangana (40.21 per cent), Jammu and Kashmir (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 Pradesh (43.93 per cent), Jammu and Kashmir (44.11 per cent), Assam (47.51 per cent), Arunachal Pradesh (48.73 per cent) and Odisha (52.64 per cent).
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. Funds to the tune of Rs 54.14 crore and Rs 13.24 crore, respectively, have been released to various states.