The Women and Child Development department has started working on setting up shelter homes for abandoned women in State. The Supreme Court of India recently directed Union Government to direct all the states to set up ‘Rehabilitation Homes’ for ‘persons living with mental illness to provide for the combined needs of Halfway-Homes and long-Stay-Homes for the foreseeable future’ and asked State Governments to submit status report definitely before August 1, 2018.
“The process requires series of serious discussions at various levels, as matter is of long term planning. We have received directions from the Centre sometime ago and will start working on it as soon. The department is serious and we are trying to see something concrete result in early days of next financial year,” said Welfare Department Joint Secretary Chitranjan Kumar on Wednesday.
Kumar added that the process required nearly exact figures of such persons, required number of homes and budget to get them constructed which had to be released by the Government for specific purpose to go ahead. “We find ourselves ready to take the task ahead as the issue is serious. But many things depend on allocation of funds,” said Kumar.
Notably, State Disability Commissioner Shatish Chandra had written for the same to the then Principal Secretary of the Welfare Department more than five years ago. In a letter to the department in 2011, Chandra had suggested setting up shelter homes cum training centre for mentally challenged and abandoned women in State.
“Big cities of Jharkhand are homes of mentally challenged and abandoned women and girls, who wander here and there, facing mental and physical exploitation. This is why it is advisable to set up shelter homes cum vocational training centre for them which could be run by Non-Government Organisations,” the communiqué from the Disability Commissioner read.
Chandra had also suggested names of cities like Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Dhanbad, Medininagar (Palamu) and Deoghar for such centres. “Ranchi is famous for two national-level mental illness treatment centres like Ranchi Institute of Neuro-Psychiatry and Applied Sciences (RINPAS) and Central Institute of Psychiatry (CIP), and such women can easily be found roaming around railway stations, bus stands and other crowd pulling places, begging for bread and getting physically exploited, unfortunate enough to even being aware of what is happening with them. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to do anything for them yet in State,” said Chandra on Wednesday.