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Freedom to PlayLet’s Make the World Fit for All Our Children to Play In
5th November 2008
Grants not enough, says child helplineIndia: PUNE: Childline, Pune, is one of the busiest helplines in the state, yet it struggles to make endsmeet. Not only has it not yet received funds from the Union government but in the past 10 years, thegrant amount has remained the same even though it has grown ten-fold in that time.
Pune is not the only city affected. Other state centres of the 12-year-old helpline for children across the country,have the same story of delay and scarcity.
Childline (1098) is a 24-hour helpline for children in distress. The situation has gotten to a point that members of thehelpline are now resorting to breaking their personal security bonds in order to help run Childline.
"It is a sorry situation. Not only are we short of funds, now we are not even getting the allotted amount on time,whereas our case load has increased," says Anuradha Sahasrabuddhe, the director of Childline in Pune.
"We used to receive around 1,500 calls a year in 2001 but the number has gone up to almost 15,000 this year," Sa-hasrabuddhe attributes the rise in calls to the increasing awareness in society, as well as the fact that the state gov-ernment has started publicising Childline through advertisements.
Childline in Pune is jointly run by non-governmental organisation (NGO) Dnyanadevi and the Karve Institute of SocialScience.
The application for the grant is sent to the Childline Foundation in Mumbai, which then forwards it to the ministry ofwomen and child development (MWCD). The grant amount depends on the grade of the city in which it is operating.
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For example, since Pune is a tier II city, the Childline here gets Rs 4.55 lakh grant per year.
Childline India Foundation (CIF) in Mumbai confirmed that there had been a delay in receiving the grant from thegovernment."The Union government annual grant usually takes six to eight months to come after the Union budg-ets. We just received formal clearance for the 2008-09 grant on Tuesday from the ministry," said Nishit Kumar, thehead of communication and strategic initiatives at CIF in Mumbai. He added that the grant amount has been thesame for the last 10 years.
CIF has applied for a revised grant amount and though the applications have been cleared by the planning commis-sion, it has not moved further."In this year's Union budget speech, the finance minister announced support to the In-tegrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) of the MWCD," says Kumar. Since then, the ICPS programme, under whichsupport to Childline will be provided, is pending cabinet clearance. Currently we receive grants from MWCD underthe street children's scheme."
When contacted by TOI, Kalyani Chadha, the director of child welfare at WCD, New Delhi, said that she was not au-thorised to comment on the issue and directed us to the joint secretary of the WCD, P. Bolina, who was unavail-able."I cannot comment on this issue, but I can say that we try and disburse the amount as soon as we receive theapplication from the Childline India Foundation," Chadha said.
Of the Rs 4.55 lakh that Childline, Pune, receives, some is reserved for repatriation cases, medicines and nutritionwhich amounts to almost Rs 50,000."While the amount reserved for repatriation is not released, the amounts allo-cated for nutrition and medicine also are not used since we have tie-ups with hospitals and social organisations whohelp us take care of both requirements," Sahasrabuddhe says. But the grant amount for running the helpline is farfrom adequate.
Sahasrabuddhe puts the amount actually needed in the region of at least Rs 5 or Rs 6 lakh. Apart from expenses on
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travel and for phone bills, Childline's biggest problem is paying the salaries of their employees."All we can spare fromthe grant is about Rs 2,000 for each employee which, of course, is not enough. So we try and pay them more usingsome of the funds that we receive through donations," she says.
The Pune team currently has 12 members and most of them are well qualified and have a post-graduate degree insocial work.
"We appealed to the secretary of the Union ministry for more funds, during the meeting of the directors of Childlineheld last year. The secretary promised us some revisions within the next year, but that does not seem to be coming,"says Sahasrabuddhe. She also added that even if nothing was done about the increase in the grant, at least theNGOs should be allowed to use the whole grant amount at their discretion.
"An amount of Rs 5,000 is allocated for uniforms every year. We do not require this every year. Yet,, we are not al-lowed to use that money for any other purpose, despite the fact that there is no question of mismanagement offunds as Childline's policy is to be open with regard to usage of funds," she says.
Hemalata Kulkarni, the director of Childline in Aurangabad (which received 1.50 lakh calls during the period May2003 to January 2008) fully endorses Sahasrabuddhe's view."Our employees are underpaid to the extent that even adaily wage worker and the daily help earn more than them! The delay in receiving the grant has become a regularfeature now," says Kulkarni, who thinks that they should be receiving the grant in advance.
"There has been quite an increase in the number of calls since Childline's inception in 2003. How can we expect ouremployees to work on such a meagre salary?" she questions. Kulkarni also raises the point that the low salary is oneof the reasons why a lot of their employees quit after some time. This leads to new expenditure in terms of trainingnew people all over again.
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The Childline in Ahmednagar (which received 1.48 lakh calls from May 2003 to January 2008) is run by an NGOcalled Snehalaya. Milind Kulkarni, the director of Childline says that he has lost all hope with regards to an increasein the grant amount.
"We have been talking about this for many years but I have not seen anything moving ahead. As for the delay, it isquite expected. Hence, we have learnt to be self-dependent over the years. We try and make do with the donationswe receive at Snehalaya," he says.
Sahasrabuddhe also feels that if not an increase in salary, the employees should at least be given a difficulty com-pensation."Some of the cases we handle deal with child marriage and child labour. In such cases, there is even a riskto life as we have to deal with goons," she says.
She also stresses on the psychological effect that the calls have on the members."Some of the things we hear arehorrific and hearing these things again and again affects us too. In fact, I have to provide emotional support to myteam members and help them to deal with it," she says.
Source: Times of India