Old, outdated phones hinder surveys by anganwadi workers on the ground; they plan to return the phones and are demanding new ones

In protest against the State government for not providing new mobile phones and an allowance to recharge them to conduct the Joint Survey of Health and Nutrition, anganwadi workers across the State have decided to stop the ongoing survey and return around 64,000 old mobile phones to the Department of Women and Child Development (DWCD) on July 1. The decision comes in the wake of the government deciding to depute anganwadi workers to collect data on possible beneficiaries of the Gruhalakshmi scheme, where women heads of families will get a Direct Cash Payment (DCT) of ₹2,000 every month. 

In protest against the State government for not providing new mobile phones and an allowance to recharge them to conduct the Joint Survey of Health and Nutrition, anganwadi workers across the State have decided to stop the ongoing survey and return around 64,000 mobile phones to the Department of Women and Child Development (DWCD) on July 1. The decision comes in the wake of the government deciding to depute anganwadi workers to collect data on possible beneficiaries of the Gruhalakshmi scheme, where women heads of families will get of ₹2,000 every month. 

Anaganwadi workers have cried foul that the government was not providing adequate infrastructure and facilities to them to carry out the surveys effectively on the ground. “Since the authorities have not responded to resolve our problems despite many requests for over a month now, we don’t have any other option but to return the mobile phones to the DWCD,” said an anganwadi worker. This, if unresolved, will be a huge setback for the ongoing Joint Survey of Health and Nutrition and implementation of the Gruhalakshmi scheme. 

Under the Poshan Abhiyan, around 64,000 anganwadi workers across the State were provided with smartphones four years ago to incorporate the information of the beneficiaries in the Poshan Tracker app. 

However, anganwadi workers now complain that these mobile phones are outdated, lack memory space to download any new application, even as the State government is asking them to download multiple apps it has created to carry out multiple surveys, and collect data and incorporate them directly in these apps. “Most of the phones now hang, have poor RAM speed and storage capacity,” an anganwadi worker said, adding that the government had also not been regularly providing allowance to them to recharge the phones and in that situation, accessing internet was also a problem.

The Department of Health and Family Welfare and the Department of Women and Child Development took up the Joint Survey of Health and Nutrition on May 30 and tasked the anganwadi workers to complete the survey, going to every household by June 30. The State government has developed a dedicated app for the survey, which many anganwadi workers complain is difficult to download on their phones. Add to this now, the government has asked the workers to download another app to incorporate details of eligible Gruhalakshmi beneficiaries. 

In protest against the government’s inaction, some anganwadi workers have already returned their phones to DWCD officials in Chitradurga district. However, senior officials have directed junior field officers not to receive these phones in the absence of a Government Order. 

“Any electronic gadget’s warranty is for six months to two years. However, the mobile phones provided by the government to incorporate the information in Poshan Tracker are four years old. All the surveys that the government readily deploys anganwadi workers will fail to take off if they are not given suitable phones to carry them out,” said S. Varalakshmi, president of the Karnataka State Anganwadi Employees Association. “The government has also not been regularly providing internet recharge charges to us. Given the financial situation of most anganwadi workers, the government cannot expect us to bear those expenses. It is just not practical as well. As the government is not responding to our demands, we are left with no option but to return the phones,” she said. The association has offered to carry out the survey manually instead if the government does not provide new phones immediately. They have also demanded that anganwadi workers be exempted from anganwadi work for three to four weeks to carry out these surveys.