Summer break for hot cooked meal?

Anganwadi centres are not serving food due to delay in fund allocation
# The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) is mainly aimed at improving the nutritional and health status of children in the age-group 0-6 years to reduce the incidence of mortality, morbidity and malnutrition.
# As per the Supreme Court order (dated October 7, 2004 which was later reaffirmed in the order dated April 22, 2009), the state government is to ensure provision of hot cooked meals in all anganwadi centres (AWC) in a phased manner.
Varanasi: There is legal provision to provide hot, cooked food to children between 0-6 years through anganwadi centres throughout the year. However, every year, for about three months, this service is given a break following budgetary delays and red-tapism.
For the second consecutive year in 2011, this programme is suffering as its annual budget has not been allocated to the district so far. According to reliable sources, with the exhaustion of budget for 2010-11 financial year on March 31, the catering of hot cooked meal to beneficiaries was stopped at all the 3,287 anganwadi and 623 mini anganwadi centres.
In-charge district programme officer Suresh Gupta also admitted that due to unavailability of budget, the HCM distribution had been stopped since April 1 and was not likely to be resumed by July.
This `gap' of three months in the child nutrition programme has not taken place for the first time. Last year as well, a similar problem was faced by the ICDS due to delay in allocation of budget after the end of 2009-10 financial year. This year, the district administration has found an ideal way to meet this problem. With primary schools, AWCs have also been closed from May 21.
District magistrate Ravindra said in view of the hot weather, the AWCs were also closed like the primary schools. The DM had no idea about HCM programme but claimed that the distribution of supplementary nutrition `panjeeri' was continuing on a weekly basis at all the AWCs.
The government machinery is taking this programme lightly at a time when the problem of malnutrition is also being reported. According to the Child Nutrition and Development Programme's (CNDP) half-yearly report prepared in April last, the number of malnourished children in grade-II and IV categories was 238 and 16 respectively. As many as 1,21,825 children were found in grade-I category of malnutrition while the number of children in grade-II category of malnutrition was 46,426.
Till the past financial year, the annual budget provided to the district was about Rs 2.70 crore. Gupta said a budget of Rs 4,000 was allocated to each AWC for a month. "But this time," he said, "the budget has been prepared on the basis of the number of beneficiaries at each AWC and 75% of the actual budget of the AWCs will be allocated. The state government has deducted 25% of the actual budget by considering that all the beneficiaries do not turn up on a regular basis."
The state government had sanctioned the annual budget for the HCM in May last and the order of its approval was also issued on May 12, which was received at the district programme office on June 3. But, officials say formalities for the distribution of this budget to the AWCs may take a few weeks' time due to which catering of HCM to 5,06,669 beneficiaries will be possible only by the beginning of July.