Volunteers of an NGO perform a street play on World No Tobacco Day in Ranchi on Tuesday. Picture by Prashant Mitra

Ranchi, May 31: Activists across the globe chanted awareness slogans on World No Tobacco Day today, but its echoes did not reach Ranchi Institute of Neuro-Psychiatry and Allied Sciences (Rinpas) in the capital.

A year has passed since a de-addiction centre for treatment of substance abuse patients at Rinpas was proposed, but the file is yet to get off the ground.

In the last financial year the state government had allocated Rs 2.5 crore for the centre. But authorities could not avail of the amount owing to their alleged mismanagement, thereby putting brakes on the proposal.

Sources at the mental health institute said that certain authorities concerned failed to act in time to get hold of allocated funds. To recover the amount in this new fiscal year is to restart an arduous bureaucratic process that involves many levels of government hierarchy.

The question now is, if a simple process to acquire funds within time could not be managed, how can there possibly be hope for this complicated one?

“I am ignorant as to how the earmarked funds went back. When I came to know about this, I urged the health department to make a fresh effort to recover the money,” said Dr Amool Ranjan Singh, the new director of Rinpas. He alleged that his predecessor Dr Ashok Kumar Nag was supposed to utilise the funds for the de-addiction centre, which he did not.

The proposal for the de-addiction hub included a 50-bed building, and personnel such as a psychiatrist, a clinical psychologist, a social worker, a yoga therapist and nurses.

When asked, state health secretary A.K. Sarkar said he had been urged by the Rinpas authorities for funds again. “I am looking into this matter. Arrangement of funds for the proposed centre will take some time,” said Sarkar.

Currently, Rinpas runs a drug rehab centre but on a very small scale, courtsey space crunch. The director said the hospital was now treating 59 substance abuse patients, including those addicted to alcohol, heroin and cannabis.

The proposed centre, when it comes up, will also facilitate the de-addiction of tobacco.

Apart from Rinpas, Central Institute of Psychiatry, Kanke, a Union government-sponsored institute, also has a 30-bed de-addiction centre.

Though not much study has ever been done on substance abuse, psychiatrists believe their number is very high across the state. In the rural hinterland, addiction to local brew such as hadia (rice beer) and mahuli (country made liquor) is very common while many urban youths are drug addicts and alcoholics.

Meanwhile, different awareness programmes around the state capital were held on the occasion of World No Tobacco Day. State health department organised an awareness camp on drug addiction, which was attended by health secretary A.K. Sarkar, state director of National Rural Health Mission Aradhana Patnaik and other doctors and representatives of non-government organisations.