R ARIVANANTHAM
CHENNAI, MARCH 15
Heaping praise on the Tamil Nadu Government for its ambitious noon meal scheme, one of the pioneer social welfare schemes, in help increasing the literacy rate, Hyun Hee Ban, the Chief – Social Policy, Planning and Evaluations of UNICEF India said it was the best role model for other states and also middle-income countries like Malaysia and Thailand here on Monday.
Interacting with the media, she attributes that the noon meal programme of the state government was the indication of high literacy rate.
She said UNICEF will contribute to the formation of the “Tamil Nadu State Child Protection Academy” to be established by the state government to protect the rights of children. She said the academy would be one of the two major projects of the State Social Welfare Department.
She said UNICEF was formulating an integrated social policy for children’s rights for the next five years and would meet with Central and State government officials to seek their views in this regard in the next few days in Chennai.
The need of the hour is proper coordination and cooperation between the Social Welfare Department, Judiciary and Police in protecting the rights of children. School Education department should be rope in to protect the rights of the children, she added.
Further she said the UNICEF is planning to conduct series of awareness programmes for media on reporting crime against children and sexual harassment.
Ban said the Education Department is implementing various programmes to improve the skills of students from Class 9 to 12 with the help of UNICEF.
Responding to queries, she said Covid-induced lockdown across the globe had created problems in educating children. She said it is necessary to make unique arrangements in all the states to rectify this. Otherwise, she said, there could be a huge gap in learning among children.
She lauded the Government of Tamil Nadu for its excellent job in administering the corona vaccine and said it was commendable that the Central and State Governments had worked together to make vaccine awareness reach the masses through several outreach programmes.
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“Climate change is causing the worst impact in India and UNICEF is taking necessary steps to address this issue through slew of awareness programmes and India was the fifth most affected country due to climate change’’.
Ban along with other UNICEF officials from the state office would meet the Chief Secretary to the Government of Tamil Nadu to discuss the next phase of UNICEF’s plans in a day or two.
K L Rao, UNICEF Office Head, Social Policy Scheme, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, Kaushik Ganguly, Administrator, were present at the media interaction.
Earlier, Additional Director General of the Press Information Bureau, Chennai and Regional Outreach Bureau M Annadurai recalled that PIB and UNICEF had jointly conducted public awareness campaigns during the Covid-19 pandemic. He also pointed out that this cooperation was a role model for other states.
