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TIMES IMPACT
Dongri home ordered to put house in order
State Asks For Report In 3 Months ...........Pranati Mehra & Anahita Mukherji I TNN
Mumbai: A fortnight after TOI reported on the pathetic living condition at the Dongri Children’s Home in Byculla, the state admitted as much before a State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) bench.
On Wednesday, member of the SHRC, Subhash Lalla, ordered them to put their house in order and report back to the commission on the improvement within three months.
Commissioner of the women and child development department, Pune, E J Khobragade, and his deputy, D V Desavade, admitted before Lalla that the
conditions in the Home—housing 517 children—needed a lot of change. Lalla had summoned officials of the Dongri home, officials of the child development department at Mantralaya and those of the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) after TOI reported on the pathetic condition in which the Dongri home inmates live. It was published on July 5. In a packed courtroom, Lalla asked the officials whether the newsreport was true or not. “Yes, in most parts,’’ they unanimously said. The department had sent a committee to visit the home soon after the report was published, and had found the amenities unsatisfactory.
H D Rathod, the CEO of the Children’s Aid Society, (CAS), which runs seven such homes in the city, was also present. Lalla also ordered that conditions in all the homes be reviewed and their systems improved.
The officials agreed that the children at Dongri were not being given underclothes as had been reported by TOI in July. “We are now providing them with underclothes,’’ they said.
The bench also directed that TOI correspondents would accompany the rights panel members on visits to the seven homes in the city, where about 2,000 children, destitute or delinquent, live.
The hearing took place in a charged atmosphere, as 79-yearold Vijayalaxmi Pandit, the CAS honorary secretary, alleged that government functionaries were preventing elected members like her from taking any active role. Pandit had come from Pune to attend the hearing after having read about it in TOI. “Politicians and their official lackeys have made it impossible for committed people to work for these homes,’’ she alleged. “They don’t even give me a chair to sit on when I take up the issues with the department.’’ Pandit had written in detail about about her allegations to the rights body. Another governing council member of CAS, Aruna Acharya, who was also present at the hearing, will submit additional information on the goings-on in the CAS to the rights body.
BETTER LIFE SOON? The inmates of the Dongri home can hope for improved living conditions following an order from the rights panel
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