‘Ill-trained’ staff still call the shots at shelter homes

BOTHERED? Ramshackle buildings, unhygienic conditions make inmates’ life worse; many managers refuse registration

CHANDIGARH: Several shelter homes for orphans, mentally and physically challenged and destitute people in Haryana are still far from being a safe haven, as indicated by the first round of inspections by the officials of women and child development department. The inspections conducted over a month concluded last week.

Stating that dilapidated buildings, unhygienic conditions and ill-trained staff had been noticed at several homes across the districts, sources in the department said that at some places the managers of shelter homes denied their willingness to get registered with the department and rather preferred to wind up the home by sending the inmates to other shelter homes.

The biggest shortcoming noticed at most of the shelter homes pan-Haryana was the dearth of trained staff.

“There were either illiterate people handling orphans and physically and mentally challenged inmates or there was no one to look after them,” said one of the officials.

The officials, ironically, were told by the shelter

We will give the erring shelter homes a month’s

time, failing which strict action would be taken against them

SUMITA MISRA director general, women and child

development department

home ‘employees’ that since the government was imposing financial and legal liabilities on them for running such homes, they would prefer to wind up operations.

However, department director general, Sumita Misra, told the Hindustan Times that even though there were a few shelter homes with shortcomings in Rewari and Karnal districts, there were others in Kurukshetra, Mewat and Fatehabad districts which were doing exemplarily work.

“We would give the erring shelter homes a month’s time, failing which strict action will be taken against them,” said Misra and held that the recruitment of staff at district level, under juvenile justice act, had also been completed even as all the deputy commissioners of 21 districts in Haryana had been told to verify and inspect all the NGOs which had applied for registration.

The inspections at shelter homes were conducted after the case of sexual abuse of minor girls at a shelter home, Apna Ghar, in Rohtak, the hometown of chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, came to light.

The case had come to light when the three girls, who had run away from the shelter home on May 7, were found by the Delhi police.

The girls narrated their ordeal to National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), members of which raided the shelter home and rescued 94 children.

Subsequently, the department decided to form district child protection units and directed all deputy commissioners to recruit staff for the same by June 30, 2012.

Also, it was for the first time that all the non-government shelter homes were asked to get registered with the department by June 30.

Apna Ghar was one of the government-funded and ‘ monitored’ homes and its head, Jaswanti Devi, was honoured by the Haryana government.