| Senior ICDS workers, helpers deprived of departmental promotions | | Poor students in far flung areas denied nutritional supplies | | S Tahir-ul Haq
Early Times Report
SRINAGAR, Mar 14: Scores of Anganwadi workers working for many years have not been promoted yet, while as needy students in far flung areas are looking for nutritional supplies. Even after having the experience and eligibility there are many workers in the department of ICDS from past two decades who have been denied promotion, sources told Early Times.
They said that there are dozens of vacant positions of Supervisors, District Coordinators and CDPOs in different blocks of Kashmir valley and with the result it has adversely affected the implementation of the scheme, which needs to be addressed at the earliest.
"All other departments have promotions but the ICDS has been ignored and if somewhere it happened, the process of promotion was not checked fully, it would deprive many anganwadi workers of their right to promotion on the basis of marks they have obtained in graduation and post graduation from different universities of India", said sources.
They added that the ICDS is fully financed by Govt of India, except the nutrition component, where as the AWCs in the state have been established to provide supplementary nutrition, health check-ups, referral services, non-formal pre-school education, nutrition, health and immunization. However if sources are to be believed the nutritional items that were received by the department concerned have not been fully distributed among the children".
Reports have suggested that the far flung areas of Kashmir valley are without nutrition items, the poor children enrolled in these centers have been deprived of the basic facilities, as the centers don't get the requisite supply from their concerned department, sources informed.
Sources also said that the ICDS is funded by CSS, Non Plan and State Plan budgets, and the authority for planning and budget formulation is largely centralized at the Directorate level. Whereas the employees are of opinion that the demands prepared at the project levels do not get reflected in terms of allocation of funds.
Irony is that, the government has failed to provide the stocks that were supposed to be in the ICDS centers so that the poor and needy children could take benefit from the centrally sponsored centers, sources added. |
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