Under 30pc Nirbhaya Fund used: RTI reply

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indo-asian news service
New Delhi, Feb 11: Less than 30 per cent of the much-hyped Nirbhaya Fund, that now has run up to Rs3,100 crore, has been utilised so far in the last five years despite tall claims by the government on women’s safety and welfare in the country, an RTI reply has revealed.
The government, in the Union Budget that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented February 1, proposed to pump in another Rs500 crore into the non-lapsable corpus fund that was launched in the aftermath of nationwide outrage over the brutal rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman — given the moniker Nirbhaya, or fearless, by the media — in the capital December 16, 2012.
In response to an RTI query, the Ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD) said till date only Rs825 crore has been utilised from the Nirbhaya Fund out of the Rs2,711 crore that accumulated in 2017-18.
Till January 2018, 21 proposals have been appraised by the WCD Ministry, of which 17 have been implemented.
The RTI query revealed that only Rs50 crore has been utilised by the Railway Ministry, which was given Rs500 crore from the fund for its proposal — Integrated Emergency Response Management System (IERMS).
The WCD Ministry had proposed seven schemes under the Nirbhaya Fund where the majority of the fund was allotted to One Stop Centres (OSCs) — a much-hyped scheme which was started in 2015. But it too remains unutilised. The reply said that only Rs81 crore from the Rs458 crore allocated has been disbursed in three years.
The OSCs are supposed to provide access to services such as medical aid, police assistance, legal aid and psycho-social counselling to victims of sexual assaults.
The RTI also revealed that in another scheme, Women’s Helplines, for which Rs156 crore was allocated, only Rs21 crore has been disbursed. Nine of the schemes come from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), of which seven have been initiated. The total fund allocated for MHA is Rs1,273 crore, out of which Rs554 crore has been utilised.
Two heavy budget schemes recommended by MHA — ‘Creation of Investigative Units for Crime against Women’ (IUCAW) (Rs324 crore) and ‘Safe City Project’ in Orissa (Rs110 crore) remain untouched, the RTI reply further reveals.