Government strict on death of mentally-ill children’s deaths

Chief Minister Smt. Vasundhara Raje has directed for strict action against the government officials responsible for deaths of 11 mentally-challenged children in the government home at Jamdoli in Jaipur. Expressing her disappointment on the issue, she said that even senior officers would not be spared for their lackadaisical attitude in handling this case.

Smt. Raje held a high-level meeting on this with Health Minister Rajendra Rathore, Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Shri Arun Chaturvedi and the Chief Secretary at her residence on Saturday.

The CM said that the deaths of children was very serious and shocking incident. Acute carelessness of the officers was witnessed in this case. “Whoever is responsible for this incident, sitting at whatever high position, will face strict action,” she said.

Smt. Raje asked the officers of all concerned departments including Medical and Health, Public Health Engineering, Social Justice and Empowerment, Education and Tribal Area Development to conduct inspections of all hostels, residential schools and children’s homes immediately to ensure facilities like cleanliness, drinking water supply and health services. She said that district collectors and other senior officers should visit such hostels or schools and send reports to the concerned department.

The CM directed for preparing protocol guidelines for diagnosis and control of water-borne and other infectious diseases during summers. She said that a state-level control room should be established to implement and monitor this protocol. Officers from all concerned government departments would constitute this special cell, which should start operations on a scheduled date every year and function 24-hours a day. She said that this cell would also monitor bleaching, cleaning and sampling of drinking water across the state.

Smt. Raje further directed for installation of CCTV cameras at children’s homes for mentally-challenged, other children homes, hostels and residential schools run by different government departments or non-government agencies. This would ensure regular and effective monitoring of this institutes, she added.

Chairperson of Rajasthan State Commission for Protection of Child Rights Smt. Manan Chaturvedi, Principal Secretary Health Shri Mukesh Sharma, Principal Secretary Social Justice Shri Sudarshan Sethi, Principal Secretary PHED Shri JC Mohanty, Divisional Commissioner Shri Rajeshwar Singh and Jaipur Collector Shri Siddharth Mahajan were also present in the meeting.

Jaipur, 30 April 2016