Children get voice against abuse

The Finance Ministry approved the Integrated Child Protection Scheme that would help set up child protection units in every district of the country, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Mar 27, 2008, 03:04:15 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Children would soon get a platform to raise their voice against abusive teachers and parents.

The Finance Ministry on Monday approved the Integrated Child Protection Scheme that would help set up child protection units in every district of the country. “Every children from the streets to posh homes will have a right to lodge complaints against anyone who abuses their rights with the child protection unit,” a Women and Child Development ministry official said.

The ministry will administer the scheme all over the country from the coming financial year. The government has already allocated Rs 200 crore in the budget for implementing the country’s first ever and most comprehensive child right scheme. In the 11th-five year plan the government will spend Rs 1,263 crore on the scheme.

However, the spirit of the scheme lies in establishing child protection units in each district. The children would be able to contact the unit directly or through a 24-hour child helpline. The unit will have powers to summon those against whom the complaint has been lodged and recommend action to the government, if the complaint is found to be true.

All juvenile homes, shelters for children and child adoption centres will also come under the purview of the unit. “It would be a body to administer all schemes related to child rights,” the WCD ministry official added. To ensure the scheme actually takes off, the Central government has decided to fund 75 per cent of the project cost for all states expect Jammu and Kashmir and North Eastern states, where the Centre’s share would be 90 per cent. In case of projects of individual NGOs, the ministry will bear 90 per cent of the bill.

The scheme would be launched everywhere simultaneously contrary to the earlier decision of introducing the scheme only at five states. The ministry expects to get the Cabinet approval in a month.

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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