With overwhelming participation and unprecedented support of people to Phase-I of the campaign Paree Pain Kathatie launched from May to June this year in the State, the Government has geared up for Phase-II of the campaign as a post-follow-up long-term action plan.
A high level meeting was held under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi wherein Director General of Police Dr Rajndra Prasad Sharma outlined the issues for discussion and IG Police Asit Kumar Panigrahi presented the proposed roadmap for the Phase-II of the campaign.
Reviewing the progress and people’s feedback in support of the campaign during Phase-I, Chief Secretary Padhi directed to prepare the convergent action plan for integrated operation at various levels during Phase-II.
It was decided to continue the campaign for creating a safe and protective environment for the children between 0 and 18 years of age.
The Chief Secretary further directed to conduct orientation camps for field level officers of departments like Women and Child Development, Panchayati Raj, Labour and ESI, School and Mass Education, Sports and Youth Welfare, Culture and Law about the objectives and methods of operation of the campaign.
It was further decided to constitute a State Level Coordinating and Monitoring Committee headed by the Chief Secretary, An Advisory Committee headed by the Director General of Police and district level Committee headed by the Collector for carrying forward the campaign.
Chief Secretary Padhi directed all concerned departments to designate a senior level officer as the nodal officer to the Advisory Committee.
It may be pertinent here to mention that Paree Pain Kathatie is an initiative of the Odisha Police launched in technical partnership with Unicef.
During the first phase of the campaign, 15 Paree Express vehicles went round all 30 districts of the State for 15 days. They covered 44,787 km and conducted around 1,400 community outreach programmes in different parts of the State.
Around 1.2 million people participated in the campaign through direct community outreach programmes and around 1.3 million people were connected through social media outreach.
The campaign focused on preventing sexual abuse of the child and received unprecedented appreciation and participation from people from cross sections of society.
It was decided in the meeting that convergent action plan would be prepared involving different departments, agencies and institutions developed under different Acts, policies and flagship programmes relating to child right, child protection, education, prohibition of child labour, rehabilitation of vulnerable children, integrated development of the child, prevention of child marriage and implementation of Juvenile Justice Act etc.
The IG Police Panigrahi said that Pahse-II would focus on carrying forward the campaign through SHG members at village level.
Each member would vow that no girl below 18 years of age would be given in marriage and no child of her family would be sexually abused. She would bring two of her neighboring families under the same vow within a year.
The campaign aims at creating protective environment for around 1.5 crore children in the age group of 0-18 years.