Through a government order issued on Thursday, the Social Defence Department (SDD) has failed to renew the contracts of District Child Protection Officers (DCPO) of four districts and has instead appointed Probation Officers (PO) or Superintendents of the department as DCPOs on an ‘adhoc basis,’ allegedly in violation of a 2015 Madras High Court order.
The terminated DCPOs include J. Raja Meenakshi of Dharmapuri district, who recently levelled corruption allegations against Minister for Social Welfare and Nutritious Noon Meal Programme V. Saroja, under whom the department functions. Other terminated DCPOs are from Virudhunagar, Tiruvarur and Namakkal districts.
The four DCPOs, like those of other districts, were appointed following the 2015 High Court order and were working on a six-monthly contract since 2016.
Apart from this, the DCPO posts of Theni and Krishnagiri, which were lying vacant, have also been filled by the headmistress of a government-run children’s home and a PO respectively.
Stating that the system of six-monthly contract itself was a violation of the Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) guidelines that demand the minimum tenure of a DCPO to be three years, one of the terminated DCPOs said, “Every time our contract expires, it is renewed in few weeks’ time with retrospective effect.”
“However, on Thursday, we received a call from the State Child Protection Society office, informing us that we have been relieved [of our duties] with immediate effect. I was involved in the inquiry into a child abuse case at that time,” the DCPO added.
‘A blatant violation’
A. Narayanan, director, Change India, and the petitioner in the 2015 case, alleged that the move was a blatant violation of the recommendations of the four-member Juvenile Justice Committee, which included its Chairman Justice S. Manikumar, based on which the Madras High Court issued its order.
A top SDD official denied the allegation that the appointments were a violation of the High Court order, since the POs and Superintendents would dedicatedly be serving as DCPOs and not as additional charge. “The government would soon take steps to fill the vacancies created by the transfer of these officials as DCPOs,” he added.
