IMPHAL, Jan 5: The Maoist Communist Party has charged that the mass-scale corruption at the highest level is taking the Integrated Child Development Scheme on the roads to doom.
According to a press release issued by its secretary publicity and propaganda, the group said after the broadening of the scheme the numbers of Anganwadi centres have touched 4501. Under the provisions of the scheme, the lady health visitor and auxiliary nurses from these centers are assigned the task of moving from house to house to tend to the sick children and pregnant women and dispense general medicines, it said. Under the programme, the centres were also required to children to provide food for 300 days a year to children below six years belonging to poor families and new mothers.
But the top level officers of the social welfare department have grouped together and are collectively siphoning the huge amount of fund released for the execution of the scheme themselves. As a direct outcome of the mass scale corruption, many officers of the department have constructed multi-crore rupees mansions, the statement said.
It further charged that projects like the Swayamsidha, Swadhar and Old Age Home 22, operated by the social welfare, have become more or less inactive. Many Anganwadi centres have been abandoned as their quality had not been maintained during construction. The contract works were handed over to contractors with the blessings of influential leaders and the departments cared just about grabbing their cuts from the contractors and have turned a blind eye on supervising the manner in which the work had been carried out, the party charged. The extreme measures taken up for termination of the 4501 centre under ICDS were necessitated due to the corrupted practice by officers of the department, it added.
The individuals engaged as mothers and helpers at the centres are dutiful and have dispensing their duties with efficacies. However, the Anganwadi centres have been on the spiral path to destruction due to the inability of the department to release the due amounts in time or misappropriation of the same. The MCP charged that officers and the minister in charge of the department are knee-deep involved in embezzling unknown amount without the knowledge of the public. There is no evidence of the lady health visitors functioning and the hordes of medicines meant for public supply have been grabbed in connivance by the suppliers, officer and minister.
Also, huge quantities of food materials allocated under the schemes have been robbed by the suppliers, it added urging the public to realize that crores of rupees have gone into the pockets of individuals. The MCP wanted to inform the people that the time has arrived to start a campaign against the department, the statement asserted, adding that it will offer all possible help without any reservation.