Economists at the workshop in Ranchi. Picture by Prashant Mitra

Ranchi, Aug. 5: With the state government spending a measly sum on child protection and child health, children are getting a raw deal.

Fifty-six per cent of children suffer from severe anaemia and over 20 per cent suffer from diarrhoea and acute respiratory disorders.

The state government has failed to keep this in mind while taking steps to streamline the infrastructure, the geographical terrain and the socio-economic profile.

The prevalence of these diseases is due to malnutrition caused by poverty and lack of safe drinking water. Only 11.3 per cent of the villages have health care facilities.

The total number of children between 0-6 years in the state is 47,96,188. Only 10 per cent of the children between 12 months and 23 months are fully immunised while around 30 per cent have not been immunised at all. Less than 10 per cent are breast-fed in the first hour of birth.

Around 7,13,088 live births take place each year in Jharkhand of which 49,916 children die before their first birthday. Even the birth registration of the children is poor, as low as 2-5 per cent.

These were highlighted at the one-day workshop organised by Campaign for Right to Education in Jharkhand (CREZ) in association with Centre for Child Rights, supported by Child Relief and You (Cry). It was held at the Social Development Centre.

Economist Ramesh Sharan said the state has highest infant mortality rate (IMR). “The high IMR, child malnutrition and lack of health facilities are issues that have been discussed in Parliament and Planning Commission meets. But the condition continues to remain the same,” he said.

He suggested the rights of the child should be ensured in the state budget for children. “These rights are framed by the social organisations but are not documented in any government report,” the economist added.

While Sanjay Basu Mullick, the founder of Save The Forest Movement pointed out that of every Rs 100 allocated in the state budget, Rs 15.11 is allocated for children.

Of this amount, Rs 13.26 is spent on education, Rs 1.68 for development, Rs 0.11 for health and Rs 0.05 for protection.

“Protection is the most neglected sector and allocation has gone down from Rs 0.12 in 2003-2004 to 0.04 in 2007-08,” Basu said.

He added that the state government has allocated maximum for the education and least for protection. This makes child health and child protection the most neglected sector, with a less than one per cent share of the total allocation.

Besides, the fund allocated for The Integrated Child Development Schemes (ICDS) by the government is also not enough.

“In a bid to access nutritional food and supplementary nutrition to adolescent girls and pregnant mothers, the government should allocate more money as there are 32,343 ICDS centres in the state. The money is not sufficient for ICDS workers, support staff, expenditure on food, training and salary of project staff,” one of the speakers said.