Govt plans to set up Anganwadi centres at tea gardens

The state government has urgently sought funds from National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) in ‘stressed’ tea gardens of North Bengal.

The government wants to set up around 180 anganwadi centres in Alipurduar and Jalpaiguri. Anganwadis are government sponsored child care and mother-care centres.

The programme aims to benefit children in the age group of 0-6 years. These centres are running under Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme to combat child-hunger and malnutrition. The state government has sought Rs 19 crore from NABARD. The money has been sought through Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF), which is a wing of NABARD and provides direct loans to state governments.

A high-level meeting was held at Nabanna in presence of chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday and a task force was formed for maintaining co-ordination with several governments’ departments, including health, food, power, Public Health Engineering (PHE), ICDS, labour and others to prevent malnutrition.