While the State is raving about the national laurels won by the children mentored by the Jharkhand State Council for Child Welfare (JCCW), the JCCW is facing acute financial crunch, with all 190 of its day-care centres in State shut down due to lack of funds.
The JCCW centres receive 90 per cent of the funds from the Indian Council of Child Welfare (ICCW) while the remaining 10 percent has to come from the State Government. However, they haven’t received funds for the last four years as the balance sheets and utilisation reports showing the ICCW's grant was used have not reached the ICCW. The state Government has also stopped the funds for the same reason.
“The Government provided the funds till date it received from ICCW, But due to the non-submission of previous statements of money provided to them, the fund being stopped. Right now the work for preparing the balance sheet is in process and once the matter is solved the fund will be released to them again”, said N N Sinha, Principal Secretary to the Governor, who is also the Honorary Secretary of JCCW.
Another problem is that though JCCW transfers the fund to every district's Deputy Commissioner (DC) on time, the fund reaches the intended beneficiaries very late-- sometimes delays extend to years. For instance, a JCCW functionary cited the case of Palamu district, which received a cheque of Rs 40,000 to set up a JCCW day-care centre in 2010. But this cheque remained forgotten for three years, and its validity expired.
In 2012, the cheque was revalidated and sent again. Its current status is still not known.Moreover, the fund given to JCCW is barely sufficient. ICCW calculates funding on a per center per month basis, putting the figure at Rs 3,532 per centre for every month. Out of this, Rs 1,217 is spent on nutritional diet of children and Rs 315 on medicines. The existing employees are reluctant to work, and new workers tough to find because only Rs 1,000 is paid to them for working from 9am to 5pm. While the employees of Anganwadi, on the other hand, are paid four to five times that amount for a 9am -12pm stint.
President of Jharkhand State Council for Child Welfare, Rooplekha Prasad admitted to the difficulties, but is hopeful of a solution. “Right now we are suffering from acute financial crisis as a result of which our all the centres are shut down. We are planning again restart our centres in Ranchi and its adjoining areas so that we can properly monitor the fund and work effectively. We are talking with the relevant people about this matter and it is expected that soon we will come up with some positive solution on it”.
Apart from funds, JCCW is also facing problems related to infrastructure. Earlier their office was in Suchna Bhawan but it was shifted to the under-renovation Audrey House, which has very poor infrastructure. According to a functionary of JCCW, “We are facing the problem of poor infrastructure. In our office there is no landline phone facility, internet and fax system.
For gathering any important document or paper I had to visit to the concerned department’s office.”