This was informed by Secretary, Woman and Child Development, Subrat Sahu in a departmental meeting chaired by Chief Minister Raman Singh here last night.
During the meeting , Sahu made an elaborate presentation of the State Government’s ‘Navajatan Yojana’ which had been running in 25 of the 27 districts covering 350 Gram Panchayats.
He said that the data of all the malnourished children would be available online which would help to monitor their health at the State-level more effectively.
Sahu informed in the meeting that the malnourished children are adopted by the Self Help Groups (SHGs), NGOs and ‘Nutrition Friends’ under the ‘Navajatan Yojana’ for restoring the level of nutrition in such children.
The organisations entrusted with the responsibility of adopting the malnourished children take regular care of them. This apart, the parents of children are also encouraged to provide nutritious food to their children, he said.
Sahu said that a ‘Weighing Festival’ would be held once again on June 6 at all the 49,000 Anganwadi centres in Chhattisgarh this year.
As per the festival programme, parents of children would be urged to bring their kids upto the age of five years in the villages at the Anganwadi centres for recording their weight, he said.
The parents of children would be informed through distribution of pamphlets in the villages to come for getting their children weighed in the festival, Sahu said.
‘After the children are weighed, a card would be prepared in which the entire details of the child would be available,’ he said. later, while applauding the work done by the Department under ‘Navajatan Yojana’, the Chief Minister stated that the parents of the children must also be made aware of the need for maintaining proper hygiene.
It may be mentioned that since the launch of the ‘Navajatan Yojana’ the malnutrition among children aged upto five years had declined by 35 per cent in the Gram panchayats. An estimated 20,000 children are being looked after in Gram panchayats by Anganwadis, SHGs and ‘Nutrition Friends’ out of which 7,000 children had been freed of malnutrition during the past six months.
The meeting last night was also attended by Woman and Child Development Minister lata Usendi and other senior officials of the Department.