Child rights panel for safer playschools

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has formulated draft guidelines for regulating playschools, after Aarushi Arora's mother Dr Rashmi Tiwari complained of no safety protocol for children in kindergartens, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Oct 26, 2008, 24:28:39 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Three-year-old Aarushi Arora’s life-long anguish of having a deformed finger because of a playschool accident will ensure safer and regulated kindergartens all over the country.

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has formulated draft guidelines for regulating playschools, after Aarushi’s mother Dr Rashmi Tiwari complained of no safety protocol for children in kindergartens.

The NCPCR will ask the state governments to register all playschools like primary schools and ensure that maids employed are trained for the job. A grievance redressal system for parents is another feature of the guidelines.

The states should also have norms on teacher-children ratio for playschools. “We have found that there is only one teacher for 30 to 40 kids. It is not humanely possible for one teacher to look after some toddlers. There should be at least one teacher or maid for 10 kids,” said Sandhaya Bajaj, a NCPCR member.

The commission said state governments should have safety protocols, learning methodologies and play tools clearly spelt out for kids. “Latch doors, which deformed fingers was Aarushi, should not be there in playschools,” Bajaj said.

On August 13, 2007, Aarushi’s fingers got crushed in a door at Mother's Pride playschool in Noida. “Although her finger was saved after series of operations she will have to live with a deformity. My normal born child is now disabled,” Tiwari told HT.

She then wrote to NCPCR asking for a national debate on the issue and guidelines for safety of children in playschools. Her efforts have finally bore fruit.

“Playschools have mushroomed all over without any regulation. Hefty fees are charged without any uniformity in the facilities which needs to be corrected,” said Bajaj.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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