India News | WCD Minister Smriti Irani Announces Rs 5 Lakh Insurance for OSC Workers Helping Distressed Women

New Delhi, Mar 2 (PTI) Union Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani on Wednesday announced an insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh for the workers of one-stop centres (OSC), established under Nirbhaya fund to provide mental, legal and medical aid to distressed women.

At a programme organised as part of the celebrations of International Women's Day week, she also announced the ministry was signing MoUs with the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) and National Legal Aid Services Authority (NALSA) to provide proper training to OSC workers to enhance their efficacy.

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"We will take care of each worker at the OSCs who are helping troubled women in the country. We will provide Rs 5 lakh insurance cover to all OSC workers.

"Presently 704 centres are functional and we aim to set up 300 more. We have also decided to create an app to assist women to find these centres anywhere they are," Irani said.

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Over 600 representatives from OSCs were physically present at the programme.

"We have an interface for OSCs in collaboration with three agencies -- Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD), NIMHANS and NALSA. We are getting into MoUs with them. The basic intention is capacity building to enhance capabilities across all OSCs," Irani said.

The ministry said that in collaboration with NIMHANS and BPRD, proper training will be provided to OSC workers so that they can counsel the women in need in a better way.

The ministry had launched the One-Stop Centre scheme in 2015 under the Nirbhaya fund.

"These OSCs provide medical, legal, police, psycho-social counselling and all kinds of help to women who are in distress. We have sanctioned 733 OSCs all over the country and 704 are functional.

"Since we have coordination with women police desk at local police stations, BPRD will act as a link and will train our people as well as those handling women-related matters in police stations for a smooth coordination between these two arms," said Indevar Pandey, Secretary, WCD ministry.

He added that the National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development (NIPCCD) and BPRD will also give self-defence training to the OSC workers.

"In every OSC, such training will be organised in collaboration with BPRD and NIPCCD. We want to bring women helpline, women helpdesk and OSC on one platform... BPRD parallelly is doing a lot of work under the Nirbhaya fund," he said.

The ministry also announced 'Naari Adaalat' as a pilot project with NALSA which will be launched soon.

The ministry, in collaboration with NIMHANS, will also provide certificate training to OSC staff under the latter's 'Stree Manorakshak' project in multiple languages which is expected to be completed by August.

Elaborating on the same, Prabha Chandra, senior professor of psychiatry and in charge of the perinatal psychiatry services at NIMHANS, said basic training has been provided to 2,033 people from OSCs so far.

"We started the psycho-social helpline as a lot of people are suffering from mental health problems due to domestic violence, gender-based violence etc. We started getting more distressed calls from women during pandemics complaining of anxiety, trauma, grief and other issues.

"We launched the 'Stree Manoraksha' project to train all OSC staff and not just counsellors so that they can help distressed women effectively. Now we launch the certificate training for all OSC staff... The training should be completed by August," Chandra said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)