Rayagada: Preschool education, or pre-primary education, has gone haywire in Rayagada district with over 569 Anganwadi Centres (AWCs) reportedly lacking their infrastructure. Preschool education is the first stage of organised education which involves the care and education of little children before they reach the age to attend regular schools. The Centre and the state governments are spending crores of rupees to strengthen preschool education, but that has reportedly not helped in strengthening the infrastructure of Anganwadi Centres in Rayagada district.
Lack of proper infrastructure has seriously hit the implementation of various programmes at these Anganwadi Centres, like vaccination drives, health camps, measurement of weights of children, supply and storage of nutritious food and teaching to the children. While some of the Anganwadi Centres lack proper infrastructure, few run out of dilapidated structures. Some Anganwadi Centres don’t have a kitchen, forcing cooks to prepare food out in the open in unhygienic conditions, Anganwadi workers alleged.
Interestingly, some Anganwadi Centres even function on the verandah of houses belonging to Anganwadi workers or villagers. This has seriously hampered children’s preschool education in various parts of the district and rendered it impossible for Anganwadi workers to discharge their duty in the right earnest. According to reports, the district has 2,082 Anganwadi Centres out of which only 1,513 have their buildings. The rest 569 do not have their infrastructure. The Department of Elementary Education has given its approval for the construction of 1,807 Anganwadi buildings.
However, work on a majority of the buildings is yet to start, while in some other cases, the work is only halfway through. Forty-nine Anganwadi Centres- six in Gudari block, 19 in Gunupur block, five in Kalyansinghpur block, eight in Kolnara block, three in Muniguda block, five in Padmapur block and three in Rayagada block – function from their buildings which are in dilapidated condition. Moreover, 47 Anganwadi Centres are in unsafe condition due to a host of reasons. This apart, 714 Anganwadi Centres have toilets, while 1,375 Centres are equipped with kitchens.
However, a majority of these Anganwadi Centres lack drinking water facilities, like tube well, for which parents are not keen to send their children there. The district has many hilly and remote regions where the Anganwadi Centres are running from shabby and dilapidated rooms. Jayanti Padmalaya Sahoo, president of the Rayagada unit of All Odisha Anganwadi Ladies Workers Association, said the state government should complete the construction of 294 Anganwadi Centres where work began in 2020, and make those functional at the earliest. Meanwhile, when contacted, District Social Welfare Officer (DSWO) Pratima Pradhan said that construction of some Anganwadi buildings has received government approval while others have been delayed due to land acquisition and other problems.