WARANGAL: Preventing child marriages is still a huge challenge for officials as they face a lot of resistance from the local communities and are even subjected to physical attack. Moreover, non-cooperation by police and revenue officials is making their task more difficult.
Most of the officials of women and child welfare department attending the review meeting called by the chairman of advisor committee of central adoption resource authority M Ramachandra Reddy to discuss adoption and child marriage issue, said that most of the police personnel are non-cooperative and never respond to their complaints.
“Why are you troubling us. If you stop a child marriage, will you get an award?” This is the kind of response officials receive when they approach the police to prevent a child marriage.
A woman officer told the chairman that in some cases, when the officials try to stop child marriage, they are attacked by the family members of the bride and groom and villagers. Sometimes they even threaten to commit suicide. “It is so surprising that whenever parents threaten to commit suicide, the police, instead of stopping them, asks us to leave. They even threaten to book cases against us for provoking them to commit suicide,” a woman official told Ramachandra Reddy.
The officials also complained that local peoples’ representatives, who are supposed to stop child marriages, come to the rescue of the families of the bride and the groom. “They even warn us and ask us to stay away from the issue,” another official pointed out.Ramachandra Reddy agreed that the officials were facing a lot of problems while trying to stop child marriages and illegal adoptions. “I also faced resistance from people running illegal adoption centre in Maharashtra. I am aware of your difficulties.
We need to take the support of various departments, especially police to prevent child marriages, especially in the Agency areas. My suggestion to you all is to inform senior police officials before you go to stop child marriages. If the police officials do not cooperate, file a case against them as well. We would see that action is initiated against erring personnel,” he said.
He said the authority was working towards a system where all the people who want to adopt children, follow the legal procedures rather than adopt illegal means.
Awareness prog on prevention of child marriage held
Jogulamba Gadwal: Jogulamba Gadwal district collector Rajat Kumar Saini took part in an awareness programme on prevention of child marriage in KT mandal. Speaking on the occasion, he urged the people to oppose child marriage and asked them to allow the marriages only after the girls turn major. He said child marriages were a crime and illegal as per law. He also asked the people to construct individual toilets in their homes.
52 RoBs to be built at level crossings in state
Hyderabad: The state government, with the support of 50 per cent funds from the railways, will construct 52 road overbridges (RoBs) at railway level crossings in the state at an estimated cost of Rs 2,700 crore this year. At a review meeting held on Wednesday, roads and buildings minister Tummala Nageswara Rao said they proposed to construct 460 ROBs at level crossings in phases and 52 of them would be constructed this year. The state government and the railways will share the expenditure equally. “We have decided to reduce the accident rate at railway level crossings by building RoBs in those places,” Rao said. Construction of a railway terminal in the Miyapur-Patancheru area is under the consideration of the railways, he said and added that construction of the second phase of MMTS would be completed by the end of this year.
Telangana’s health dept planning to begin eye screening for entire State soon
Hyderabad: Telangana State health department is charting strategies to screen entire population (around 3.5 crore) in the State. While officials from health department said that they want to screen everyone within span of 100-days, experts in eye care suggested some more time to be given to it. As per the current plans, the department’s officials intend to screen people of all age groups to know the number of people suffering from blindness or having vision impairment problems and provide them with treatment including giving spectacles. It is learnt that to implement this, initially survey would be conducted by ASHA Workers, ANMs, to find people suffering from vision impairment.