To set up a boarding school for homeless children, three departments of the Delhi Government will be working in close coordination and the modalities of the same will be worked out in a couple of weeks, a senior official said.
Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia during his budget speech has allocated Rs 10 crore for setting up such a school. According to an official privy to the development "The modalities of the school will be worked out in close coordination with the Department of Social Welfare, Department of Women and Child Development (WCD) and the Department of Education," he told PTI.
Talking about how the idea of school originated, the official said in post-pandemic period, there was a surge in the number of homeless children."It was observed that number of children seen near traffic signals had increased after pandemic as opposed to pre-pandemic time. We did a pilot project in Malviya Nagar with the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR) and district authorities to see that if they are provided residential facilities, how will they be benefitted. We identified the children, how they ended up there and found that we may be able to prevent them from getting into begging by providing them residence," he said.The government will be coming up with a full-fledged scheme.
"The government has a commitment towards every child. Our school model is very inclusive and if there is a segment that is not attending school, we will have to assess the reasons and work on them," the official noted. Speaking in the Assembly, Sisodia had said, "Children from homeless families who live on roadsides, footpaths, under flyovers and stairs or on open places of worship, pavilions, railway platforms etc. are deprived of basic facilities like shelter, food and education.""The government has taken several measures to provide basic education to these children. However, these measures have been only partially successful. It is not possible to get quality education unless basic facilities like food and shelter are in place.
The government has decided to set up a boarding school with modern facilities. These schools will also facilitate children to live along with education and try to bring them into mainstream of the society," Sisodia saidAnother official said the WCD has been working on the issue of street children and had even issued guidelines for their identification. He said various NGOs and district authorities could also work on identifying such children. The data collected by district authorities of such children would come in handy for the education department, he said.
The policy had said there is no legal definition of street children. But Save Children Organisation, in its report, "Surviving The Street: A Study of Street Children In Delhi" had given reference of UNICEF, according to which three types of children belong to category of street children.
The three categories of street children are--those who run away from their families and live alone on street; second is street-working children who spend most of their time on streets fending for themselves, but return home on a regular basis; while last category is children from street families who live on streets with their families. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also spoke about the initiative during the post budget press conference and said steps taken in this direction in past did not bear desired results because they lacked human touch.
Talking about the initiative, he said the children would be provided emotional and psychological support at the school that would have "five-star" facilities.
"When you stop at a traffic light, you do not pay heed to a child knocking at your window. Till date, no government has paid attention to children standing at traffic lights because they are not vote banks. "We will take care of them. Our government will build an excellent school for those children, they will stay there and study there. We will make them better citizens," Kejriwal added.