Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Plea to rename orphanages

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Assembly on Wednesday heard a fervent plea to rename orphanages to remove the negative connotation of the title.

The plea which came from Congress member K.C. Joseph, was endorsed strongly by Speaker K. Radhakrishnan and accepted instantly by Health and Social Welfare Minister P.K. Sreemathy.

The Speaker also gave the helpful suggestion to rename institutions that housed orphans as ‘protection homes’. The Minister said the government would welcome a suggestion from Mr. Joseph himself on the subject.

Earlier, responding to a calling attention motion from N. Rajan (CPI), the Minister said the government had issued strict guidelines for running orphanages.

According to the guidelines, such institutions should be run only with permission from the State Orphanage Control Board. In case there was any complaint about such institutions, the board would initiate inquiries against them and take remedial measures, including withdrawal of recognition.

The Minister said there were as many 1,412 such institutions offering protection to 70,120 orphans across the State. Out of them, 700 were receiving grant totalling Rs.8 crore annually from the government.

The government had issued orders for observing August 26, the birthday of Mother Teresa as ‘Orphans’ Day’.

Responding to another calling attention motion from K.K. Shaju (JSS), SC/ST Development Minister A.K. Balan said that the Local Self-Government Department had decided to cut from the annual Plan allocation of local bodies the unutilised or diverted SCP/TSP funds.

He also agreed with the member that the norms for allocation of SCP and TSP funds to the local bodies were not scientific.

The Minister told the member that the government had effected sharp increases in the allocation for educational assistance for SC/ST students and that instructions had been issued to officials to complete distribution of assistance to SC/ST students before July end.

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