The services of more than 200 protesting Anganwadi workers have been terminated. The Child Development Project Officer (CDPO) Anju Badola said that due procedure was followed and notices were served to the protesting Anganwadi workers before their services were terminated.
However, the State Anganwadi workers association president Rekha Negi alleged that this is a ploy of the government to break down the protest of Anganwadi workers which has been going on for about two months now.
According to Negi, “What is the sense behind terminating the services of only a few Anganwadi workers when around 500 workers are protesting in each block? If they want to terminate the service of protesting Anganwadi workers then they should terminate all from service at once. This step is politically driven to suppress us and our protest.”
However, the CDPO justified the step taken by the department. According to her, “We issued notices to them thrice and also called the president of Anganwadi workers association to return to their job as I myself have received multiple letters from the department but the protesting Anganwadi workers refused to return to their work. So we served the notice of terminating the service of 242 Anganwadi workers in Kalsi. Initially, I had the total number at 275 Anganwadi workers but few of them returned to their work so only the remaining workers were served the termination notice.”
Negi further averred that MLA Harbans Kapoor had earlier told them that no termination notice would be issued to Anganwadi workers till February 4 as the chief minister will then meet them. Reacting to the allegations, Badola said, “I don’t have any information regarding this; we took action on the basis of the letter we received from the department and directorate.”
About the process of terminating the service of Anganwadi workers, Badola said that Anganwadi workers are muster roll employees and their services can be terminated after issuing three notices.
“Besides the Anganwadi centres are also not running for more than one month when the High Court has clear guidelines that we have to provide supplementary nutrition to children, pregnant women and lactating mothers for 300 days. However, no such procedure including distribution of Take Home Ration (THR) is followed by Anganwadi workers which is the violation of High Court guidelines. Therefore after they refused to come back to their work, we served them termination notice around 5.30 pm on Saturday. There are chances that many Anganwadi workers will return to the job after the served notice. We are already getting many calls from Anganwadi workers who want to come back but the actual numbers will be known only on Monday,” added Badola.
Meanwhile, concerning the initiation of communication with Chief Minister Negi said, “We were given the date of February 4 and if no initiation will be made by the Government on that day, then wait and watch for the kind of protest we can do. They lied to us to save their vote banks in Delhi election but if this Government will keep doing injustice with us, our Anganwadi association will be opposing them in each and every election while supporting the Opposition party.”