Cooking gas facilities to over 1 lakh ICDS centres across state

Kolkata: The state Women and Child Development & Social Welfare department will replace the earthen chulhas in the ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) centres across the state with cooking gas, which will contribute towards curbing pollution. The state Finance department has already approved Rs 287 crore for the project that will kick off as soon as the ICDS centres open up after the Covid situation comes under control.

Shashi Panja, Minister for Women & Child Development and Social Welfare, while presenting the annual financial statement for 2021-22 at the state Assembly on Friday reiterated that among all departments, the fifth largest allocation of Rs 16045.98 crore has been made for her department.

Since the start of the Covid situation in March 2020, the department has continued to provide food to 73 lakh children associated with 1,17,076 ICDS centres in the state. Instead of cooked meals, 2 kg rice, 2 kg potatoes and 300 gm masoor dal have being provided to each children in the ICDS centres every month. At least 15 lakh pregnant and lactating mothers are also being provided by the department.

Panja pointed out that there has been a significant increase in widow pension since 2019, which has continued unabated even during Covid times. Before 2019, over 1.77 lakh women received widow pension that has now gone up to over 28 lakh. "Not a single pension case has been stalled during Covid and once the Assembly elections were announced, we took special permission from the Election Commission so that we could continue with the provision for widow pension," Panja added.

Elaborating on her department's achievements, she said malnutrition among children, which was 33.19 percent before May 2011, dropped to 6.46 percent in February 2020.

The missing children recovery in the state has been 4,247 in 2020-21 against 6,331 from 2018-2021 (till date), the department has been able to stop 7,494 child marriages. There were 9,550 complaints related to child marriages from 2018-2021.

The minister referred to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data to declare before the House that crimes against children and women trafficking is much less in Bengal in comparison to some major states.