Siliguri, June 29: Sashi Panja, the minister of state for child development, today said the anganwadi centres in closed tea estates would keep functioning and food would also be provided to all family members of children found to be malnourished.

"At the Integrated Child Development Scheme centres in the closed tea estates, food is being provided to all children of the area which each of the centres caters to. Added to it, it has been decided that among these children, whoever is malnourished, would be identified. Food would be provided to them as well as to all the adults in their families," said Panja, who is also the minister of state for women and social welfare.

Panja was in Siliguri to attend meetings on the prevention of malnutrition of children in north Bengal and to monitor programmes for prevention of child trafficking. She also held a meeting at Uttarkanya today.

A district official who was present at the meeting said: "If a child in a closed tea estate is found to be malnourished, it is unlikely that other family members of that child are not malnourished. Thus, this decision has been taken to ensure that the entire family can be provided with food to prevent malnutrition."

He added: "For other children who are having food at the ICDS centres but are not underweight or malnourished, it is clear that their families are getting adequate food provided as relief by the state."

At present, seven tea estates are closed in north Bengal, while at least 25 other gardens are running in an ailing condition.

"It is not the work of my department to take an initiative for reopening the closed tea estates," Panja said. "On our part, we can focus on providing adequate food to children to prevent malnutrition among them. We have thus passed a clear instruction to the district project officers to ensure that the anganwadi centres, which function under the ICDS, continue to run the closed tea estates."

Panja also said her department has been maintaining a liaison with the state public health engineering department so that safe drinking water and adequate water for sanitation is provided to children and their families at the closed gardens.

At the meeting with the district programme officers of ICDS, officials and anganwadi workers of the department, the minister asked them to emphasise on providing nutritious food for breakfast at ICDS centres, instead of "apparently tasty" items. "We know there are budget constraints. Even then, nutritious food such as chola (gram), sattu (roasted gram powder) or milk can be easily served instead of fried snacks or biscuits," she said.

Panja said 56,000 children in the state have acute malnutrition.