Gross violations of guidelines at Swadhar Grehs: NCW

The National Commission for Women has found "gross violations" at 25 out of 26 Swadhar Grehs (government-funded shelter homes for women in difficult circumstances) that it inspected randomly.

Inspections were made on a random basis at five Swadhar Grehs in West Bengal, eight in Odisha, eight in Karnataka and five in Uttar Pradesh, and it was found that only one Swadhar Greh is running as per the guidelines of the scheme and the remaining 25 Swadhar Grehs are not running as per the guidelines.

In Uttar Pradesh, Swadhar Grehs have been found to be grossly violating the principles and guidelines framed by the Central scheme.

An inquiry committee was formed by the NCW to carry out the inspection of five Swadhar Grehs in the state's four districts, namely Allahabad, Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Varanasi.

"In certain cases, the Swadhar Grehs are not existing in the address mentioned in the authenticated list from the Women and Child Development with that of the State Government. It is necessary to initiate action in correcting the anomalies in the lists of Swadhar Grehs uploaded in the website by different agencies of the government," the report noted.

Likewise, separate inquiry committees were formed for each state.

"The committees conducted inspection by examining attendance registers of both the inmates and staff, case files of inmates, condition of the infrastructure, facilities available to the inmates like counselling, medical aid, vocational training and so on.

The committees interacted with each inmate individually to know their background and the reasons for their stay in Swadhar Greh," NCW stated in the report.

"Though there are monitoring committees at the district, state and central levels, supervision by these monitoring committees in the inspection of running of Swadhar Grehs is totally missing," said the report.

--IANS

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