Following complaints that children in many anganwadi centres are being forced to consume contaminated water, the Women and Child Development Ministry has sought details from the Water and Sanitation Ministry on quality of potable water being supplied in these centres across the country.
“It has come to our notice that children enrolled in the anganwadi centres were either not being provided potable water or have no option but to consume contaminated water. This is a serious issue as it is also hampering our anti-malnutrition campaign.
“Our Minister Maneka Gandhi has written a letter, desiring to factually know the status of drinking water quality in anganwadi centres across the States,” a senior official from the WCD Ministry said.
According to the latest data available from the Water and Sanitation Ministry, there are around 6,91,212 anganwadi centres across the country of which nearly 6,13,846 have water drinking facilities while children and anganwadi workers in 7,7,366 centres are yet to get the facility.
Anganwadi centres are expected to play a vital role in providing supplementary nutrition, non-formal pre-school education, nutrition and health education, immunisation, health check-ups
for newborn babies, and to ensure that all children
below the age of six have received vaccinations.
However, seized with the fact that poor or lack quality water hampers many basic facilities, a meeting under the WCD Ministry was also held in this regard to review the sit ation wherein it was decided to ascertain the actual status through the Water and Sanitation Ministry.
Subsequently, States such as Sikkam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripuar, Mizoram, Goa, Puducherry, lakshwadeep, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Andaman and Nicobar island and Chandigarh have been asked to send reports of ten samples each while other States have to submit 25 samples each.
The WCD Ministry has also provided a list of selected high burdened districts for ten states including Bihar, Chattishgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand to ascertain the water quality.
The Water and Sanitation Ministry has asked the States to conduct drinking water quality test for total dissolved solids (TDS), colour, total hardness, ammonia, free residual cholorine, iron, arsenic, fluoride, nitrate, sulphate and e-coli among others.