Smt. Krishna Tirath, Minister of State for Women and Child Development presided over the 4th meeting of the Central Monitoring Committee (CMC) of National Mission for Empowerment of Women (NMEW), here today. This Committee has been constituted for review, oversight, guidance and support to the National Mission for Empowerment of Women.
Speaking at the occasion, Smt. Krishna Tirath said that the Ministry of Women and Child Development has taken a number of initiatives on the legislations and programmatic front through the different implementing structures at the national and state level. She said that the National Resource Centre for Women at the centre and the State Resource Centre for Women in the states have today become vibrant platforms for providing technical support to the government on various inter sectoral issues affecting women in the areas of health, education, livelihood, legal rights etc.
Smt. Tirath stated that the themes of Violence against Women, Declining Child Sex Ratio, Child Marriage, Trafficking, Health & Sanitation, Drinking Water, Right to Education, training of Elected Women Representatives, Gender Budgeting, I.E.C Activities, Drudgery reduction, Innovative Financial Inclusion, Engendering Livelihood Programmes etc. have emerged as focus areas in which the empowerment of vulnerable and marginalized groups is the Ministry’s special concern. She also said that the grassroot level success can be seen through Poorna Shakti Kendra model where Mahila Gram Samanvayaks are playing a key role in addressing women’s issues.
The Minister stated that the issue of Child Sex Ratio has been taken up in a Mission mode now. The Ministry is preparing a National Plan of Action taking into account the recommendations of NAC and Sectoral Innovation Council set up by this Mission. The National Resource Centre for which has been coordinating this exercise has a crucial role to play in the future too for getting this plan operationalized.
Smt. Tirath expressed her concern over the issue of violence against women. She said that it is time that men and women at the grassroots level are mobilized as change agents to achieve a Violence Free India. In order to take this initiative forward the Ministry of WCD have worked out a programme of ‘Ahimsa Messengers’ to address violence against women and generate awareness amongst the community on various laws meant for women. At the same time, curative part also needs to be addressed through an integrated and coordinated teamwork of multi-sectoral and inter-agency network at one place for the rehabilitation of survivors of violence against women. For this the Ministry is planning to initiate ‘One Stop Crises Centres’ and ‘One Stop Service Centres’ in different districts.
The experts who are the members of the Committee gave their suggestions for operationalization of the legal provisions, rolling out of the National Child Policy 2012, crèches for working women in un-organized sector such as construction labours, and more focused schemes for social inclusion of women, more so from the destitute and marginalized sectors. They said that the Ministry for Women and Child Development should be the nodal point in identifying areas where the budget of the different Ministries should be allocated within their gender budgets. The Experts also advised that the Ministry needs to identify keen strategic areas for interventions for the other concerned ministries such as Human Resource Development, Health & Family Welfare, Social Justice, etc.
Also present at the meeting were Ms. Nita Chowdhury, Secretary Women and Child Development, Ms. Padmaja Mehta, Sr. Economic Advisor, Ms. K. Ratnaprabha, Additional Secretary, NMEW and the representatives of various Ministries such as Human Resource Development, Health & Family Welfare, Social Welfare etc. In addition to this, Ms. Pam Rajput, Mr. P. S. Krishnan Mr. Amod Kanth, Mr. Amod Kumar were present along with other experts and officials from Ministry for Women and Child Development and NMEW.