Govt support eludes orphan children

SAHARSA: Jhunia (7) does not know the name of her mother and father. She also does not know any of her relatives or the name of her native village. She only remembers that her mother and father were swept away in the whirling Kosi water and did not come back.
Jhunia was also floating on flood water sitting on a bamboo platform when the residents of Routa village under Sonbarsa block rescued her and gave shelter for more than five months.Since January 2009, she has been living in the special orphanage for the hapless children who lost their parents in the catastrophic flood in 2008 following the breach in Kosi embankment near Kusaha (Nepal).
The condition of Bambam (8) and his younger, speech-impaired brother Amarjit, is equally pathetic. They, too, are not aware of their original whereabouts and the names of their parents. For them, the volunteers of Akanksha orphanage, particularly activist Shivendra Kumar, the head of the orphanage, are their parents and relatives.
The scenes of unprecedented devastation of Kosi flood comes alive after visiting Akanksha orphanage at Tiranga Chowk here where more than 20 orphan boys and girls are living. If Kumar, the secretary of Indrakshi Educational and Social Welfare Society, which runs the orphanage, is to be believed, he and his volunteers have literally been begging to arrange food and clothes for these children. The volunteers of Indrakshi society had recovered these children them from remote, flood-ravaged areas of Saharsa district.
Kumar said that he had not received any financial assistance from any government agency. The local administration, despite repeated requests, had refused to allocate foodgrains on subsidised rate, he alleged.
Pointing towards eight-year-old girl Babita, who is ailing due to blood deficiency, Kumar said her two brothers and three sisters were left alone in this world by her mother Kendula Devi who was drowned in flood water. Her father Raja Ram Mandal of Rupouli village under Sour Bazaar block had died much earlier in an accident in Delhi.
The story of another eight-year-old child Vijoy and younger brother Shyam Sundar is not any different. After their mother was swept away in the flood, their father became mentally ill and died three months back. There is one more elder brother of Vijoy, but, he, too, is mentally ill.
A team of child protection unit (Zila Baal Sanrakshan Ekai) had visited this Aakankcha orphanage in August and September this year and had found 30 orphan children in the age group of 1-15 years living there. The team had admitted that the orphanage had not received any financial assistance from the government so far.
Saharsa district child protection officer Kalpana Biswas Lahiri had, in a letter on September 20, 2009, has requested the assistant director of the social security cell to accord certificate to this orphanage under Rule 71 of Kishore Nyay Adhiniyam 2000.
District magistrate R Laxmanan said the representative of the aforesaid orphanage had once contacted him and he had advised them to submit proposal for government grant in the prescribed format, but, they had not submitted the required proposal. The proposal, when submitted by the orphanage, would be sent to the department of welfare and social justice for financial assistance, he added.