Fill child protection officer posts: Madras High Court

Chennai: The Juvenile Justice Committee of the Madras high court has recommended to the state government to fill the posts of district child protection officers in the 32 district children protection centres in the state.

A writ petition by ChangeIndia sought a direction to fill the post of probation officer and district child protection officer in all 32 districts in Tamil Nadu with suitable candidates with required qualification under the Integrated child protection scheme. The NGO also prayed for establishing observation homes, special homes and other steps for the protection and welfare of juveniles in conflict with law.

Earlier, while passing interim orders on the PIL, the First bench headed by Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul constituted the court’s Juvenile Justice Committee to go into the issues raised by the petitioner and submit its report.

The committee comprising Justices S. Manikumar, R. Mala and K. Ravichandrabaabu and a retired judge G. M. Akbar Ali has submitted a 66-page report before the Bench suggesting 15 recommendations to handle juvenile justice related issues. In the report,  the committee suggested measures, including creating a separate website for juvenile justice system.

The site may contain notifications, GOs, details of pending cases and other related matters. The committee also suggested that a separate de-addiction centre for children should be established in addition to 28 de-addiction centres run by private organisations.

The committee suggested full-time counsellors for 32 districts as the child protection system was entirely different from psychologists being appointed in government homes.
The social welfare department submitted that a total of 1,498 child care institutions were functioning in the State.

Of this, 1,120 were run by private NGOs. Among these, 169 were aided by government. A total of 428 unregistered child welfare organisations were shut down. After perusing the report,  the Bench said the committee should monitor the implementation of its recommendations  and to fix a time frame.

The bench directed the panel to convene its first meeting in two weeks and posted the matter for compliance on January 29.

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