A destitute home with no children
Source: Hueiyen News Service
Imphal, March 17 2011:
A destitute children home run in Chandel district was found without a single inmate even though the NGO is running the home with funds availed from the government.
Apart from having no children, the home was found to have no infrastructures to lodge children.
A fact finding team of the Coalition on Children Rights Protection (CCRP) who visited the home today discovered the prevailing condition of the home at Liwa Chaning village in Chandel district.
The Liwa Chaning Women Society runs the home with fund assistance from the government.
As per the government norm, at least 25 children are to be lodged in the home which has been set up for destitute children to avail assistance.
This is the first time the CCRP found a destitute home having no children.
In the home built with earth and roofed with GI sheets, there was no electricity, water supply facility and no proper toilets or any other necessary infrastructures which should be provided in a destitute children home.
TS Mosison, a member of the Liwa Chaning Women Society, in an interaction with the fact finding team, said that the home has been getting government assistance since its inception in 1978.Government had recognized the home as chidren destitute home in 2009 .
The present structure of the home was built by the state social welfare department after the previous building was swept away by a storm in 2004.No quality control was maintained at the time of construction, the member revealed.
Interestingly, even though no inmates were found in the home which has a capacity for 25 children, the society had submitted a proposal for lodging 50 children, according to Mosison.
She further said that the society is running the home with hardship as government has not released funds for the year 2010 till date.
She claimed that 14 children are being lodged in the home currently, and that the inmate children are at present kept in the houses of members of the society.
She further claimed that the children are studying in St Paul High School and Liwa Ching High School.
However, her revelations was contradicted by the school authority of the St Paul High School who said that no child from the home has been admitted to the school.
The school authority explained that no one from the destitute home had ever approached for enrolling destitute children in the school.
According to villagers, they saw some children in the home around a month back but the children they had seen were children of the families of the caretaker and cook working in the home.
Moses Maring, member secretary of the child welfare committee, Chandel said that the home at Liwa Chaning village is the only home run with the assistance of the government.
Unsatisfied with infrastructures provided in the home, they send destitute children of the district to a children home in Thoubal district run by Rural Income Generation Centre.
So far they have handed over seven children including a girl to the centre, she added.
There are 15 children, victims of child trafficking, under the care of the district children welfare committee.
They are lodged at Epam Lamdam Rehabilitation Centre at Moreh.
Earlier there were 22 children, she said.
Members of the CCRP fact finding team, in the meantime, suggested government to look into the condition of children homes run in various places of the state and to cancel funds to homes with no children.
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