Hard to digest

That precious funds meant to be spent on ensuring nutritious meals for poor children, pregnant women and lactating mothers in Punjab should have been diverted and misused by the authorities is a grave lapse as it has a direct bearing on the health of the kids. The Accountant-General (Audit) has found that huge chunks of money sanctioned for the Integrated Child Development Services were wasted during the 2014-19 period in five districts on food storage containers by procuring them at exorbitant rates, which caused a loss of over Rs 700 lakh. Just imagine how many children would have been saved from wasted and stunted growth in the crucial years of their mental and physical development had this amount been rightfully used on their diet through the state’s Supplementary Nutrition Programme. The National Family Health Survey-4 for Punjab is telling as it shows that 22 per cent kids below five were still underweight and that wasting among them had increased to 16 per cent from 9 per cent recorded in NFHS-3.

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It is impossible to digest the fact that even as other districts bought the containers at Rs 814 per unit, officials in Ferozepur, Gurdaspur, Fatehgarh Sahib, Ropar and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar paid Rs 2,980-3,429 for the same. In 2019, too, the state authorities handling this matter had been accused of profligacy and misplaced priorities when they held seminars on poshan in five-star hotels at the cost of feeding the needy youngsters in anganwadi centres. Lack of wholesome food is a major cause of childhood morbidity and mortality.

This splurge of scarce resources is callous in the light of the fact that there are still many miles to go before the scourge of malnutrition is removed. Despite so many schemes in place for decades, it is a pity that Punjab, which prides itself on being the food bowl of India, has not yet been able to feed all its young children properly. And that this sorry state of affairs should prevail, in some measure, due to the misuse of funds by those in charge of improving the health of children amounts to a criminal lapse.