Four ill-fated orphan girls, including two school-going ones, of a family whose parents died of HIV/AIDs are now struggling hard to earn bread as no caretaker has come forward to take them into custody.
According to sources, Ashok Kumar Swain of Swainsahi under Rajgada panchayat of Mahakalapada block died four years back of HIV/AIDS while he was working at Gujarat. After the death of Swain, his widow wife and four girl children began to lead a miserable life. later, the villagers came to their rescue and engaged Jayanti as cook at Panchayat High School at Rajagada. Jayanti and her four children somehow managed with a monthly income of Rs1, 000. However, Jayanti too affected with HIV died recently.
Namita Swain (17), eldest sister among the four siblings, said, “I passed matriculation in the year 2014 and my younger sister Kabita too passed HSC examination in 2015.Though, we wanted to go for higher studies ,but circumstances compelled us to leave our studies midway as our father died and our ailing mother was struggling to collect bread for us . Meanwhile, our third younger sister Sabita, a speech impaired girl but meritorious and the youngest Sunita, who are in their schools may have to leave education at anytime. We do not know whether we would be able to survive in this cruel world or not.”
“Due to paucity of funds, the villagers came for our help and provided some money to perform the last rites of our deceased mother. Even, the local administration too provided a sum of Rs 10,000 from the District Red Cross fund. But, the money would be spent in performing the last rites of our mother,” said Kabita.
“I have been struggling to make my ends meet as I am a daily wager .I would not able to take the responsibility of my four orphan nieces. Hence, I urge the local administration to take the responsibility of the four girls by rehabilitating them,” said Ramesh Chandra Swain, the uncle of the four orphan siblings.
Meanwhile, Mahakalapada BDO Kailash Chandra Behera paid a visit to the village to take stock of the situation. He stated that the four siblings were not afflicted with HIV viruses. The local administration has provided 50 kg of rice to them for completing the last rites of their mother and also within a day or two another 50 kg of rice would be provided. The local administration has also provided Antodaya Card to these four siblings and also provided a sum of Rs300 as pension for the speech impaired girl.
Behera maintained that the local administration would provide a sum of Rs25,000 under social welfare scheme and would construct a pucca house for the four siblings under Biju Pucca Ghar Yojana. Even the local administration has decided to set up an Anganwadi in the village and would engage one of the matriculate siblings as anganwadi worker for their survival. Steps would be taken for providing education to the meritorious girls. The district administration will take all the steps to rehabilitate the four orphan siblings, the BDO said.
NRO Subashis Sarangi provided a sum of Rs1,000 and announced to provide Rs500 per month to the siblings for their survivals after he came to know from social media about their plight. The Kendrapada Seva Samiti(KSS) also provided some monetary aid to the four orphan siblings, said KKS member Subashis Mohanty.