Anganwadi workers and Assistants continued their protest for the second day at Ramanathapuram Collectorate on Saturday, pressing a charter of demands.
| Photo Credit: BALACHANDAR L

More than 1,000 Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) workers staged a protest for the second consecutive day here on Saturday demanding 30-days-summer vacation.  

The district secretary K. Mallika said that while students would not be attending classes during the summer vacation, they were being utilised for various other works.  

“Instead, similar to schoolteachers and education department staff, we should also be given 30-days’ vacation,” she added.  

While most of the ICDS workers had been in service for more than a decade, they should be made permanent staff, she noted. 

“ICDS workers carry out some of the essential duties such as providing nutritious food to children and lactating women, we also do survey works to take note of pregnant women in the district,” Ms. Mallika said.  

Valuing the importance of ICDS, they should be recognised at the earliest, she said.  

As a new face capture system was introduced to distribute nutrition powder to lactation women through Take Home Ration (THR) programme, it was making the work more complicated, she complained.  

“While it was done through getting a signature from the beneficiary, the face capture system using the 3G/4G mobile networks provided by the government, was an extra load to the works,” she added.  

Due to the delay in receiving the network, it took at least one hour to capture a single beneficiary, she alleged.  

Following talks with the government, they ended the two-days protest.