Mothers committees to take shape of campaign

BHUBANESWAR: To put in place an effective monitoring mechanism for the implementation of the emergency feeding and supplementary nutrition programmes (SNPs), the Women and Child Development Department has decided to recast mothers’ committees in a campaign mode across the State.The Department, on Wednesday issued a set of guidelines to all Collectors, directed that the mothers’ committees be reconstituted on an annual basis. The last time the guideline was issued on formation of the committees was in 2006. The WCD Department has made it mandatory that the mothers’  committees have to be constituted taking into consideration caste and class composition of villages. The number of such panels will be based on the anganwadi centres in a village. The Government has directed that the mothers’ committees will have to track under-nutrition among children under-two years through door-to-door visits. Besides, they have been mandated with pre-school activity monitoring. The panels will also ensure that vulnerable and disadvantaged children such as the physically challenged, children of migrants are enrolled in schools. Besides quality assurance of all feeding programmes managed by the Department, the panels will also have to create an awareness among all the mothers about their entitlements and necessity of supplementary nutrition and motivate them to send their wards to schools. The panel members will have to make at least two household visits every fortnight for counselling the mothers on sanitation and health issues.As per the guidelines, a mothers’ committee will have a maximum of six members. There will be two active self-help group members who will be selected on the basis of their performance made under Mission Shakti, a female ward member will act as chairperson. If no female ward member is available in the village, the highest educated female of the village will be considered for the position of the chairperson. An NGO member or a representative from a youth club will also be admitted as members. Besides, a pregnant woman, a lactating mother and a woman having children between seven months and five years will be invited to the committees while preference will be given to persons from the SC and ST communities. The Department has also made it clear that each committee must meet on 20th of every month. The committees have to keep a tab on SNPs such as morning snacks and warm cooked meal for pre-school children, take home ration for pregnant women, lactating mothers and under-nourished kids besides monitoring emergency feeding programmes in eight KBK districts.