Government Plans Phase-II Of Paree Campaign

Bhubaneswar: With the overwhelming participation and unprecedented support of the people to Phase-I of the Paree Pain Kathatie’ campaign launched by the Government of Odisha from May to June this year, the government has initiated steps for framing Phase-II of the campaign as a post-follow up long term action plan.

A high level meeting to this effect was held under the chairmanship of the Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi at the Secretariat conference hall on Wednesday afternoon. Director General of Police, Dr Rajendra Prasad Sharma outlined the issues for discussion and IG Police, Asit Kumar Panigrahi presented the proposed road map for Phase-II of the campaign.

Reviewing the progress and people’s feedback in support of the campaign during Phase-I, Chief Secretary Padhi gave directions to prepare a convergent action plan for integrated operation at various levels during Phase-II. It was decided to continue the campaign for creating a safe and protective environment for the children between 0-18 years of age.

The Chief Secretary further directed to conduct orientation camps for field level officers of Women and Child Development, Panchayati Raj, Labour and ESI, School and Mass Education, Sports and Youth Welfare, Culture and Law departments about the objectives and methods of operation of the campaign.

It was further decided to constitute a state level coordinating and monitoring committee under the chairmanship of the Chief Secretary, an advisory committee under the chairmanship of Director General of Police and district level committee under the chairmanship of Collector for carrying forward the campaign. The Chief Secretary directed all the concerned departments to designate a senior level officer as the nodal officer to the Advisory Committee.

It may be pertinent to mention here that ‘Paree Pain Kathatie’ is an initiative of the Odisha Police launched in technical partnership with UNICEF.

During first phase of the campaign, 15 Paree Expresses went round all 30 districts of the State for 15 days. They covered 44,787 km and conducted around 1400 community outreach programmes in different parts of the state. Around 1.2 million people participated in the campaign through direct community outreach programmes and around 1.3 million people were connected through social media outreach. The campaign focused on preventing sexual abuse of children and it received unprecedented appreciation and participation people from a cross section of the society.

It was decided in the meeting that a convergent action plan would be prepared involving different departments, agencies and institutions developed under different acts, policies and flagship programmes relating to the rights of children, child protection, education, prohibition of child labour, rehabilitation of vulnerable children, integrated development of the child, prevention of child marriage and implementation of the Juvenile Justice Act etc.

The IG Police Panigrahi said that Phase-II would focus on carrying forward the campaign through SHG members at the village level. Each member would vow that no girl below 18 years of age would be given in marriage or brought in as a daughter-in-law in her family and no child of her family would be sexually abused. She would bring two of her neighbouring families under the same vow within a year. The campaign aims at creating a protective environment for around 1.5 crore children in the age group of 0-18.