Sanjib Kumar Roy
Port Blair, Aug 17: Recent double murder case of Juvenile Home have shaken entire Andaman and Nicobar Islands, but sadly things haven’t changed much in Social Welfare Department. After the bone chilling episode, things have become further worse, inside the Juvenile Home, it is alleged.
Andaman Sheekha has learnt that situation is really grim inside the Juvenile Home even today and it seems that if nothing is done now more bad news could come out, from the correction center soon.
Earlier, the Social Welfare Department had 4 Care Takers, 3 Watchmen, 1 Cook, 1 Craft Instructor (Bamboo) and one Home Guard (total 10 staffs) to run the show inside Juvenile Centre. After death of one care taker and one Watchman the number has reduced to just eight.
Instead of learning a lesson from past mistakes and increasing the strength of staffs inside the Correction Centre the Social Welfare Department has decided to run the show with these seven (total 8 – 1 cook= 7) remaining, employees thus compromising with the safety of all these employees and the entire Islands.
Earlier, staffs of Juvenile Home used to have eight hour long shift-duty but after murder of two staffs now remaining staffs are being reportedly forced to work for nearly 12 hours a day, violating all government rules.
These employees constantly fear for their lives, as they know, if anything goes wrong they will also fall victim.
“The toilet block is inside the hall room of inmates and to reach to the toilet we have to cross the beds of the inmates. We don’t know when which inmate will charge us or attack us. We are at great risk,” said an employee of the Juvenile Home, who doesn’t want his name to be quoted.
Highly placed sources confirmed that for precaution to local inmates out of the total four have been kept in different rooms with one Myanmarese inmate each. All of them are behaving normally till now, it is learnt.
“That isn’t an encouraging sign. Even on the day of the crime, they were normal and behaving normally with us. We could not smell anything suspicious in their behaviour. We are unsafe here,” said one of the staff, on the condition of anonymity.
The problems for the staffs do not end here. Inside the Juvenile home no senior staffs sit and in case of any kind clash or fight the lower level staffs have to take decision and intimate the superiors.
The Juvenile Home neither has a land phone nor any vehicle to take any inmate to hospital in case of emergency.
As per norms, training is mandatory for all staffs of Juvenile Home but the present batch of staffs do not have basic training in handling Juveniles.
It is learnt that even the Chief Secretary and Secretary Social Welfare have visited the Juvenile Home and interacted with the inmates but no one ever felt like talking t the employees to understand what went wrong in the Juvenile Home, which resulted in such incident. Things are still messy inside the Juvenile Home and the Administration must place a proper system inside the Juvenile Home.
At present the Junvenile Home badly need more staffs. Already a home guard has been posted inside the Juvenile Home and if the Administration feels, it can post more such Home Guards in civil dress or DRMs inside the Juvenile Home. This will not only reduce the burden of present batch of staffs but also ensure zero error. Remember a stitch in time will surely save nine.
