Goa maybe getting notoriety for rising cases of alcoholism and drug abuse, but there was not a single beneficiary in the State under the central sponsored Scheme of Assistance for Prevention of Alcoholism and Substance (Drug) Abuse.
Reason. The State has not forwarded any proposal for setting up any de-addiction centre during last three or four years.
Ditto was the case with Tripura, Jharkhand and six UTs — Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Dadar & Nagar Haveli, Daman & Diu and lakshadweep — where there are neither any de-addiction centres nor any Integrated Rehabilitation Centre for Addicts (IRCA).
Taking strong exception of the fact that no de-addiction centres have been set up in the past three years in these three States and six UTs, a Parliamentary panel led by BJP lok Sabha MP Ramesh Bais has asked the Union Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry to take up the matter seriously and pursue with them to send proposals of setting up such centres at the earliest.
The Committee, which has submitted its report to Parliament recently, also noted that even though the Prevention of Alcoholism and Substance (Drug) Abuse was an important scheme, funds were curtailed from Rs50 crore to Rs35.11 crore at Revised Estimate level in 2014-15, due to late receipt of proposals from the State/UTs.
According to various data, at least 25,426 people committed suicide due to drug and addiction related problems in the last decade across the country, which means an average 2,542 suicides every year, 211 per month and 7 per day.
On the Government’s reply that the NGOs in all the States were asked to forward the proposals for running de-addiction centres, the panel took a dig at the Centre saying that “it fail to understand when there are no IRCAs/deaddiction centres in these States how will they forward the proposals.”
The panel also noted that fund amount revised under the Scheme in 2015 was not enough as many NGOs involved in the rehabilitation and treatment of the victims of drug abuse and alcoholism were facing shortage of fund and manpower.
Even though there are estimated 3.4 million drug abuse victims across the States, there are just 401 rehabilitation centres operating presently.