18 children receive ‘Rashtriya Balshree Samman’
After waiting for years, 18 children of Bihar and West Bengal received the prestigious Rashtriya Balshree Samman on August 1 at Kilkari Bal Bhawan in Patna. Additional chief secretary of education department Sanjay Kumar, director of arts and culture department Karuna Kumari, noted writer Usha Kiran Khan and director of Kilkari Jyoti Parihar jointly presented the award. Parihar applauded the awarded children, some of who were differently abled, for their extraordinary creativity that was exhibited through their works. The children, selected in 2015 and 2016, were awarded in 2021due to some technical reasons.
26 children rescued while being trafficked
Acting against child trafficking, RPF, GRP and the volunteers of Hajipur unit of Child Line rescued 26 children, who were being trafficked to Punjab as child labourers. RPF IG of East Central Railway S Mayank said that 26 children were rescued from a train at Hajipur, Sonepur and Chapra by the RPF cops and the Childline volunteers on August 4 from the KarmaBhoomi Express. “Nine traffickers were arrested for the crime”, the IG said, adding that all the children and the traffickers belonged to different districts of Bihar’s Seemanchal. He said that the RPF has rescued 830 children in 2019, 313 in 2020 and 355 in 2021 till August 4 from various trains with dozens of traffickers
Over 50,000 people trained to save lives
Bihar Orthopaedic Association (BOA) has trained around 50,000 people in immediate life saving measures. The trained people include school students from class nine to 12, cops and common citizenry. Coordinator of BOA, Dr Rishabh Kumar, said that they have been trained in basic first aid and other methods under the nation-wide ‘Save SELF, Save ONE” initiative of the association. “All basic trainings were carried out through the virtual mode between August 1 and 7 in all districts of Bihar,” he said.
Covid-19 orphaned 645 children
Bharatiya Janata Party MP Sushil Kumar Modi, sharing information from the RS, said that a total number of 645 children in the country have become orphaned after they lost both or either of their parents due to Covid-19 from April 1 to May 28. Modi said that Uttar Pradesh reported the highest number of 158 followed by 119 in Andhra Pradesh, 83 in Maharashtra, 73 in Madhya Pradesh, 45 in Gujarat, 23 in Telangana, 20 in Punjab, 16 in Chhattisgarh, 13 in Himachal Pradesh and 11 in Jharkhand. Notabl, no such case was reported in Bihar.
Rajesh K Thakur
Our correspondent in Bihar rkthajipur@gmail.com