Substandard food distributed by Haryana anganwadis: CAG

Bringing into focus the lack of checks and balances in the Supplementary Nutrition programme under the governments flagship ICDS scheme,a CAG audit has said that substandard food was being distributed by Anganwadi centres in Haryana,Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat.

Bringing into focus the lack of checks and balances in the Supplementary Nutrition programme under the governments flagship ICDS scheme,a CAG audit has said that substandard food was being distributed by Anganwadi centres in Haryana,Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat.

The Supplementary Nutrition programme implemented by the Union Women and Child Development (WCD) ministry aims to combat the problem of malnutrition in the country by providing dietary supplements to children,pregnant women and lactating mothers.

In its report tabled in Parliament earlier in the week,the CAG said in Haryana,two supply orders worth Rs 2.69 crore were placed in April 2006 with a firm to supply ready to eat multi cereal energy mix food.

The report said that two out of the 19 projects to which this food was supplied,refused to accept it observing that the same was not as per the norms prescribed. The CAG report said that while this fact was brought to the notice of the state ICDS Directorate,no further testing was done for the food stuff which was accepted by the remaining 17 projects.

This posed a question mark over the standard of serving of 14,516.20 quintal food costing Rs 2.69 crore in these projects, the CAG report said.

The CAG report in its evaluation of the Supplementary Nutrition programme in Gujarat said that instances of supply of flour after expiry of shelf life were noticed while a social audit conducted by the Council for Social Development,New Delhi at 154 AWCs of Anantapur District in Andhra Pradesh had found that during September-November 2008 the ready to cook mixes were unpalatable.

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