The Congress on Sunday said that poor co-ordination between various departments of the Maharashtra government is responsible for the huge number of children dying in the state due to malnutrition.
“There is a Tribal Welfare Minister, Child Welfare Ministry, Health Department and Education ministry in Maharashtra which should have come together and worked, but there is no coordination between these departments. Due to this lack of coordination such incidents take place,” said Husain Dalwai, Rajya Sabha MP from Congress.
As per reports, in Palghar district more than 4000 children are suffering from malnutrition and around 600 have already died because of it.
In a recent incident, a child named Sagar Wagh died due to malnutrition, and when the Bharatiya Janata Party leader and the Tribal Development Minister for the Government of Maharashtra, Vishnu Sawra, finally took notice and went to visit the home of the deceased after 15 days, he had to face the anger of the tribe.
The opposition Nationalist Congress Party also protested against Sawra by burning his dummy.
Former MLA Vivek Pandit said, “These tribals belong to a primitive tribe which normally don’t express their feelings, but the way they ventilated their anger towards Vishnu Sawra shows how angry they were not only towards him, but to the state of Maharashtra. She lost her son who was sick for more than a year and almost 600 tribal kids have lost their lives in the last one year.”
He added that the Government of India has stopped the funding for the VCDC program for supplying food to the malnourished children and since last year. I have reminded the chief minister as well as the guardian minister every now and then, but nothing has happened and these lives are lost.
