Indore: City’s Anganwadis Grapple With 2,500 Vacancies

Indore (Madhya Pradesh): At a time when unemployment is spread across the market, the women and child development department has over 11,000 vacancies across various designations like child development project officers, anganwadi workers, anganwadi helpers, and mini-anganwadi workers in the state. 

Of these vacancies, 2,500 are in the city resulting in non-functional anganwadis. There are 1839 anganwadis in the city of which around 857 are mapped with pre-schools under the consolidated vulnerability mapping tools but only 1819 anganwadis were functional in July says a WCD report. 

The shortage of regular workers has led to a number of contractual workers being recruited. A major problem that the city has been facing due to this is to keep a tab on the number of functional anganwadis.   

“As the number of CDPOs, anganwadi workers, anganwadi helpers, and mini-anganwadi workers is limited, the staff appointed to the pre-schools are expected to help out in the daily chores of the anganwadis,” said Rajkumari Goyal, anganwadi worker.

The report mentions that in 2022, only 1 CDPO, 2 anganwadi workers and 4 mini-anganwadi workers were recruited even though the vacancies ran into thousands. There has been no recruitment for the position of anganwadi helper in the last two years, and the department has started appointing anganwadi helpers on contract.

“The main hindrance to the recruitment procedure is lack of interest among the applicants to become anganwadi workers or helpers. Many want to become CDPOs, but they often do not have the necessary qualifications. As a result, the department has eased the eligibility criteria,” said an anganwadi worker who did not want to the quoted.

Recruitments made last year

POST   Number of recruitments made  

CDPO         01  

Anganwadi worker   02         

Anganwadi helper         00  

Mini-Anganwadi worker 04

The data from administrative report of women and child development department