The Delhi government will be providing smartphones to its Anganwaadi workers. This is expected to increase control over the 10,752 Anganwaadi centres enabling adequate monitoring. Aadhaar-based registration of the Anganwadi employees is also on the cards.
These Anganwadi centres that function under the Central government’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme, provide benefits to over 1,13,000 children and also help about 4,37,000 pregnant and lactating women.
Each Anganwadi centre is managed by one registered Anganwadi employee who has one to three assistants, based on the size of the centre. Together, they ensure that the nutritional and health requirements along with basic pre-school education needs of small children are met. These centres cater to seven month old infants as well as kids up to the age of six, taking care of their vaccinations too.
The plan is to provide one smartphone at each of the 10,752 Anganwadi centres so that management of these centres becomes easy. Currently, about 18 registers have to be maintained along with attendance.
The cost of distributing these smartphones is Rs 11 crore. However, the Central government’s Poshan Abhiyan scheme will bear 50 per cent of the costs, since the initiative is part of it.
These phones will have applications installed in them to record attendance, as well as the opening and closing times of the centres. Through these phones, photographs of the children being provided food, the time of serving food and so on can be shared and tracked. Adhar-linked registration of all the Anganwadi employees will ensure documentation of their names and household names.
