The Central government will bring into operation from April ‘one stop crisis centres for women’ at government hospitals in one hundred districts across the country to protect women against violence at home and workplaces.
Informing this at the southern regional consultation to formulate the national policy for improving child sex ratio (CSR) here on Thursday, Union Minister of State for Women and Child Development Krishna Tirath asked the State government to act quickly in identifying the number and location of the centres that it wanted to set up. She also wanted the State resource centre for women to be strengthened to take the initiative forward.
This is the first consultation taken up by the Centre in a bid to improve the CSR following its decline from 927 in 2001 to 914 in 2011 against 1,000 boys in the age group of 0 to 6.
The delegates comprised women and child welfare officers from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Puducherry, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Andaman and Nicobar and Lakshadweep.
Ms. Tirath said the one stop crisis centres will be headed by senior doctors at the hospitals and comprise eight to ten others, including counsellors, police officers, lawyers, psychiatrists, nurses and support staff.
Her Ministry was also in the process of initiating a mass movement through ‘ahimsa messengers’ to discourage violence against women, she added.
Additional Secretary of Ministry of Women and Child Development K. Ratna Prabha said there were 119 districts in the country with CSR lower than the national average of 914.
The decline was minus 18 in Andhra Pradesh during the decade. The situation was bad in Warangal and Kadapa.
Principal Secretary Neelam Sawhney said gender-based selection was the cause of declining CSR.
Women and Child Welfare Minister V. Sunita Laxma Reddy was also present.
