Bhubaneswar, Jan 12 : A Child Rights body – Odisha Alliance for Child Rights (OACR) has demanded provision made in the State budget to protect and promote child rights.
This view was expressed by speakers at a seminar organized by OACR here today.
The speakers said the children constitute as much as 38.8 per cent of the State’s population as per the last Census.
“They represent not just Odisha’s future, but are integral to securing Odisha’s present. Yet development indicators continue to show slow progress towards securing their welfare and delivering their basic rights,” they said.
“OACR, an alliance of child rights groups, however welcomed the decision of State Government to seek suggestions from public for the 2016-17 budget through website and SMS,” said Chairman Ranjan Kumar Mohanty said.
He said there was still a huge gap between the money needed to fulfill the rights of children in the State and money promise to the budget, and between allocation and actual expenditure in programme delivering mechanism.
UNICEF Child Protection Specialist LN Nanda; Adoption Centrum’s Ruby Rout, CRY-Kolkata’s Ashish Sarkar, Save the Children’s Maitrayee Mondol, and Aide-et-Action activist Debendra Kumar Swain focused on increase of investment for children in various sectors including child health, child development, child education and children in difficult circumstances.
The participants also emphasized on allocation of finances for implementation of state plan of action for elimination of child labour, specialized health care system for new born at different level, more observation homes in the state, residential child care institutions at source and child care and learning centres at destination point to address the issues of children in migration, allocate adequate finances to implement the norms of Right of children to free and compulsory Education Act and child care institutions for children with disability etc.
Senior Research Fellow CYSD-OBAC Surendra Sahoo gave a presentation on “Budget for Children in Odisha Context- Trend & Future Prospective” in which he pointed out that the budgetary provisions are not being raised over the years.
