Govt to have power to take over orphanages

The government is set to empower states to take over unregistered orphanages and child-care homes on the ground of child abuse or any other irregularity. A key change proposed in the Juvenile Justice Act is a follow-up of the reported abuse of children in Delhi-based Arya Orphanage in February this year.

Updated on: May 3, 2012, 02:03:50 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government is set to empower states to take over unregistered orphanages and child-care homes on the ground of child abuse or any other irregularity. A key change proposed in the Juvenile Justice Act is a follow-up of the reported abuse of children in Delhi-based Arya Orphanage in February this year.

The Delhi government had told the Women and Child Development ministry that the present law does not allow the government to take over a private unregistered institution. It only allows the state to transfer the children from a private home to a government-run child-care institution.

Now, the ministry has circulated a draft on proposed changes in the Act suggesting tough action against orphanages and child-care homes, which fail to provide safe and cordial living space to children below the age of 18, including taking over the institution.

The ministry has proposed insertion of a new chapter five with new guidelines for registration and upkeep of a child care home. The chapter stipulates different activities the homes will have to undertake for welfare of the children.

Running an orphanage or child-care centre without registration with the government will not be permissible in the proposed amendments. "It will mean that even existing orphanages will have to register with the government and come under government regulations," a senior government official said.

In fact, these institutions will come under direct supervision of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) to be constituted in each district of the country. The committee can have official and non-official members. The government in several districts has nominated representatives of NGOs as members of CWC.

According to the proposed changes, the CWC will have power to ask the district administration or the state government to take over a private home after a proper inquiry. The CWC will also have powers to instruct the institutions to adopt "child-friendly" techniques including special games, education and prescribing child-attendant ratio.

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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