Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das on Thursday stressed on wiping out malnutrition and expressed his Government’s resolve to free the State of the biggest impediment in human development within 5-years. The CM was speaking at ‘Vision for Jharkhand-An Agenda for Development’ organised by Unicef at Ranchi.
A State Nutrition Mission is on the cards, said the CM, which will address concerns of nutrition and ways to end the curse upon Jharkhand. The agency will be headed by the CM and will adopt a multi-sector approach against malnutrition. The agency will be centralised body acting not only for prevention of malnutrition but also for treatment of malnutrition through means and methods as decided by the members of the body.
Das added that the mission will monitor the initiative to address malnutrition at State, district and block level. The battle against malnutrition will be fought with the help of an army of about 14,000 ‘poshan sakhis’ to be appointed in the State. The CM announced that all 8-lakh pregnant women will be provided with maternity benefit of Rs6,000 per year.
Chief of Unicef Jharkhand, Job Zachariah said that Jharkhand is one of the richest regions in the world with mineral resources worth Rs200-lakh crores. Jharkhand also has huge resources of Jal, Jangal & Jameen but progress cannot be made unless core issues are addressed in right spirit. “Jharkhand can progress only if the State urgently addresses 5 issues around health, nutrition, education, safe water, sanitation and child protection with highest priority. These issues relate to reducing malnutrition among children, reducing child mortality, eliminating open defecation, ensuring quality education for all children and ending child marriage, child labour & child trafficking,” maintained Zachariah.
Carrie Auer, Chief of Field Services, Unicef assured all support to the State Government to address these 5 priority areas. Mridula Sinha, Principal Secretary, Government of Jharkhand said education of girls is the magic bullet that will address several issues including malnutrition, neonatal mortality, child labour & child marriage.
Among the Government officials present on the occasion, Principal Secretary, Drinking Water & Sanitation AP Singh said that 500 gram panchayats will be made open defecation free this year whereas Jamtara DC, Shashi Ranjan Singh suggested that there is a need for establishing a system to monitor accountability of Government officers at all levels.
SN Pradhan, AD CID & Sampat Meena, IG CID elaborated in detail about the strategies to prevent child labour, child trafficking and child marriage. The conclave presented recommendations for improvement in the 5 areas to the CM in the plenary session. Around 150 participants representing government departments; NGOs, corporates, panchayati raj members and universities attended the meeting among others.