After the success of happiness curriculum in Delhi Government schools, the Early Childhood Care Curriculum (ECCC) has been launched for Delhi residents’ wards.
On Wednesday, distributing smart phones to Aganawadi workers, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal asked to update monthly entries using smart phones and forget the old styled register entries. Kejriwal distributed 10,000 smart phones to Aganawadi workers.
Realising work profile of Aganawadi workers, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) regime provided smartphones to reduce the administrative burden of the workers, the initiative has been taken to maintain a real time monitoring mechanism of the status of all centers.
Interacting with the workers, Kejriwal said that there is a perception that Anganwadis are merely centres for providing food to children. Children would come, they were given food and sent back. “Now an ECCC is being introduced so that Anganwadis provide the kind of care and education that is provided at the expensive playschools. Even the poor will have access to the facilities that the rich do. Anganwadis will now be developed into playschools,” Kejriwal added further.
Speaking about the smart phones being provided to the 10,000 workers, Kejriwal said, “Whenever governments have to provide electronic appliances to people on a large scale, ordinarily they provide substandard products. But we are providing you a high end phones, ones that ministers, IAS officers use. You don’t have to worry about the data charges either, the government will take care of it.”
“Earlier you would have to maintain 11 or 12 registers monthly at each Anganwadi. Now using this smartphone, you will be able to enter everything into our database and the government will directly have access to that information. This is a digitisation of the entire Anganwadi sector that will not only benefit you, but also the department,” the chief minister added.
“If you are unhappy at your workplace, how will you improve the conditions there? We have tried to rid your work environment of all the difficulties you would face. If you ask for a salary hike now, we will grant it. Don’t worry about your salary, it is my job to keep you happy. But then it is your responsibility to keep Delhi’s children happy. I won’t give you reason to complain, but then you cannot give Delhi’s parents any reason to complain too,” Kejriwal added.
Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia who also holds the portfolio of Woman and Child Development said, “Across the world it has been acknowledged that 80 percent of children’s brain development takes place by the age of 6. But India has continued to neglect early childhood care. Delhi’s Anganwadi reforms are an effort to change that and build a model for the country.”