Bhubaneswar: With an objective to bring down the malnutrition rate in Odisha by 15-20 percent and ensure the development of women in the state, the Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives (APPI) on Monday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Odisha government.
The MoU was signed in the presence of chief minister Naveen Patnaik, chairman of Wipro Group Azim Premji and officials of APPI at the State Secretariat here.
As per the agreement, APPI would spend about Rs 300 crores towards eradication of malnutrition and development of women in the state over a period of 8-10 years.
“We had a chance to interact with the senior officials of the Women and Child Development department in terms of their commitment to address the problems of malnutrition in the state of Odisha and I think that commitment will be going very far in terms of the success of the project. I was very pleased to learn that the state government is appointing nodal officers in each of the four key departments which have to work with us to be able to get a concerted end output in terms of what we achieve,” Premji told the meeting.
Premzi thanked the state government for its commitment which he said has to set up a framework to be able to make APPI accountable as well as to make the state government accountable for the execution of the project.
Thanking Premji and the APPI for collaborating with the state’s efforts at reducing malnutrition among women and children, the chief minister said Odisha has taken significant strides towards the well-being and development of women and children.
“Our initiative like Mamata for pregnant mothers, decentralised supplementary nutrition programme, introduction of Janch Committee in every anganwadi centre, involvement of self-help groups (SHGs) and piloting of community management of malnutrition are already showing significant progress in reduction of malnutrition,” Patnaik said.
He further said the state, through APPI, intends to benefit from the expertise and core competence of WIPRO in technological innovation and consulting over and above the nutrition sensitive programmes covered under this partnership.