By Amrit Pal Brar
Sangrur, 17 June 2019
Every parent is concerned about physical and mental safety and security of their children, but parents cannot always be with their children especially in the schools where children spend long time. In such cases, the safety of children in schools is a serious issue so necessary steps are being taken in private as well as government schools in district Sangrur to ensure hundred percent safeties of students.
While giving this information, Deputy Commissioner Sangrur Ghanshyam Thori directed the heads of all government and private schools of the district to ensure the overall security of the students by giving reference to the guidelines issued by the Ministry of Human Resource Development.
Deputy Commissioner also directed that a separate committee should be constituted under POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offense) Act 2012 for disposal of internal complaints related to sexual harassment in addition to complaints of people, school staff, parents and students.
Details of these committees along with the contact numbers should also be displayed on the notice boards of schools and also on official school websites so that immediate action can be taken in case of such incident.
The Deputy Commissioner also issued instructions to ensure that the security arrangements are made within school premises with the help of nearby police stations
The DC instructed that CCTVs should be installed at appropriate places inside and outside schools, the staff appointed in the schools, including non-teaching staff such as bus driver, conductor, attendant and allied staff must be counselled and their mental level should be tested.
Record of staff posted in schools should be kept safely and it should be ensured that security guards have been employed only by the recognized agencies. DC Thori said schools should constitute a committee of parents, teachers and students to assess the safety needs of students and there should not be entry of any outsiders in the school buildings.
DC asked the school authorities that there should be a separate register to maintain the record of persons visiting the schools and school staff should be provided with training to protect children from any kind of harm so that they should discharge their duties in a better way.
Thori said that the District Child Protection Officer, Sangrur has been posted as a nodal officer to ensure the regular compliance of these directions in district schools, who, after scrutiny of the schools, will file reports every month.He also said that while doing any investigation, the District Child Protection Officer can also consult the SHO of the local police station, district education officer, secondary or primary school education officers and representative of civil surgeon or senior medical officer.
He also instructed the District Education Officer, Secondary and Primary, to contact the administrative department for those government schools where CCTV cameras are still not available and ask them to do it as soon as possible.
