States yet to send report to Centre on shelter home irregularities
Sources in the Union Women and Child Development Ministry said that letters were issued to all chief secretaries last month after Bihar scandal to ask district magistrates to inspect shelter homes.
Published: 08th August 2018 02:59 AM | Last Updated: 08th August 2018 06:28 AM | A+A A-
An eyewitness shows the spot where a girl was allegedly beaten and killed by a staff member at a state-funded shelter home, in Muzaffarpur district. (File Photo | PTI)
NEW DELHI: The shocking irregularities at the shelter homes in Uttar Pradesh involving sexual abuse of several girls have come to light despite a Union Women and Child Development Ministry directive to states to get all such homes inspected by district magistrates.
Sources in the Ministry said that letters were issued to all chief secretaries last month after Bihar scandal to ask district magistrates to inspect all shelter homes in their jurisdiction but not many states have responded even a week after the deadline.
“We had asked all the states to send reports by the stipulated deadline of July 31 but only a few have done so thus far, we are expecting more to take the direction seriously and send the reports,” a senior official in the Ministry told TNIE.
Sources also said that as per Juvenile Justice Act and Swadhar Greh scheme through which shelter homes for women and children are governed, district magistrates are supposed to inspect shelter homes in their areas regularly but that seldom happens.
On Monday, the day when a case of sexual abuse of over 20 girls at a shelter home in Deoria was unearthed, the Ministry scrambled to fast-track an earlier proposal to build single shelter home in every state that will directly be under state control.
This, wrote WCD Minister Maneka Gandhi, in an internal wrote was being done to prevent “abuse and misuse” by NGOs which run the shelter homes in most states.
Some activists, however, said they do not fully agree with the new proposal.
