To
Dr. S.C. Jamir Date-
19.11.16
Hon’ble Governor, Odisha
Raj Bhawan
Bhubaneswar
Sub- Memorandum on “Child Death in Malkangiri”
Respected Sir
In the backdrop of death of more than one hundred
children in Malakangiri district due to outbreak of Japanese Encephalitis (?), a state-level
consultation of Civil Society
Groups was organised at Red Cross Bhawan, Bhubaneswar on 17.11.16
to debate and discourse about issues relating to incidence of child
death and explore the opportunity
of intervention of Civil Society to find out
permanent solution to it in terms of checking child death in the district.
The meeting started
with welcome address by Sri Manoj Jena, Human Rights Activist and
Core-Committee Member of NGO Cell of NHRC
followed by presentation of
two Fact-finding Reports presented by Sri Pradip Pradhan, State Convener, Right to Food Campaign, Odisha and Member of Advisory Group of NHRC, and Sri
Gouranga Mohapatra, Convener, Jana Swasthya Abhijan, Odisha Chapter who
depicted child death due to malnutrition and hunger
among the tribal children. after presentation, the house engulfed in debating
the incidence of child death from
various perspectives and citing
various reasons such age-old negligence and callousness of the
administration, huge corruption and
irregularities in implementation of Govt. programme, absence of effective
grievance redressal mechanism and monitoring mechanism at district level,
deliberate attempt to suppress
information about magnitude of child malnutrition, inaccesability to food security programme and denial of
entitlement, bad-implementation of food
security programme, huge food insecurity
among the tribals, disastrous health situation, mal-administration, vacancy in
the posts in different offices including
District Hospital, PHC and CHC etc.
The prominent members who participated in the consultation were
Sri Panchanan Kanungo, former Minister, Govt. of Odisha, Sri Rabi Das,
Senior Journalist, Sri Pratap Sahu, Dalit Rights Activists Sri Ashok Mallik,
Kalandi Mallik, Prof. Jantrana Parikhit, Madhumita Rath, Suresh Panigrahi, CPI(M),
Social Activists like Ashok Das, Mrs.
Usharani Behera, Ranjit Swain, Meghna Kinnar, Sri Sudhir Sabat and Sri Ranjit
Patnaik from CACL, Sri Akhand, Human Rights Activist, Chandranath Dani, Prakash
Nayak, Health expert and many others.
After deliberation, the house felt that it is
state-sponsored murder of children in
the district and unanimously passed the resolution expressing deep concern over child
death and condemned negligence, lackadaisical attitude
and failure of the State Govt. to check
child death in the district. The house also agreed that the reason of the child
death as cited by Govt. does not
attribute only health hazard rather food
insecurity and malnutrition among the children for years together. The house also resolved to appraise His Excellency to exercise his
power as custodian of the tribals of Malkangiri coming under fifth schedule of
the Constitution and take the following steps including direction to the State
Govt. to check the innocent lives from grave disaster.
A.
Constitute
Commission of Enquiry to find out the reason of child death in face of
diversed views on it
and fix responsibility for such
holocaust.
B.
Appoint
High-level expert Team to review the relevance
of numerous development programme, manner of
implementation of food security programme, whether the programme itself is defective or it is
badly implemented with time-bound
manner. The recommendation of the team should be properly implemented.
C.
Multi-stakeholder
Grievance Redressal mechanism to be developed to hear the grievance of the
people and address it within time limits and fixing responsibility on the erring
officials.
D.
As
reported, thousands of the tribal children are still suffering from
malnutrition in the district who are in red zone. Massive drive needs to be
undertaken to identify these children and special nutrition programme to be
launched to improve their health condition.
E.
Transparency
and accountability to be enforced in the implementation of development project
and all food security programme.
F.
The
huge vacancy in different category of Govt. posts should be
filled up on war-footing way to revamp
administrative mechanism to render
service effectively and making it reach out at door step of the people.
Thanking you
Yours sincerely
Pradip Pradhan
Manoj Jena
Madhumita Rath
Dr. Rina Roy
Sanjay Sahu
Bijalalaxmi Routray
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