Five infants branded in Nabarangpur.

Nabarangpur: BASANT RATH.

In yet another shocking incident, five children aged between 60 days and 7 months were branded with a hot iron rod in Pujariguda village under Jharigaon block of Nabarangpur district on Saturday.

The anganwadi worker of the village came to know of the cases during a routine health check-up programme and immediately intimated to Supervisor Sandhaya Rani Mohankuda, immediately admitted the children to the Umerkote hospital. All the children, who have been kept in the SNCU of the hospital, are recuperating, hospital sources said.

The children are suffering in pneumonia, and were first taken to public health centres at Jharigam for treatment by his family members. As the ailment did not heal, family members took the children to the village Disari,  Dhan Singh, who  branded them at over several places on their body, reports said. 

Despite Nabarangpur district administration's awareness programmes and arrest of Disaris (local faith healer), there seems to be no end to the menace of branding infants with a hot iron for curing them of illnesses in this tribal dominated district of Odisha. At least nine cases of branding of babies by traditional healers have emerged in district within three months of an awareness campaign against the practice.

It may be mentioned here that to check recurrence of such incidents the district administration had taken up an awareness programme for Disaris named Campaign Jyoti.

Through this program, all Disaris in the district were identified with an aim to make them aware about the medical and legal implications of their superstitious practices.

Recently Nabarangpur district collector was honoured by the state government for this innovative project. This incident has again hinted that much more has to be done to end the menace.

RTI exposed over illegal appointment of Pharmacists in DDC Nabarangpur.

Nabarangpur:

Even though 157 unemployed pharmacists applied for the Drug Distribution Centres (DDC’s)in government run hospitals they are yet to receive any information on their appointments. 

Expressing deep concern over the appointment procedure and criterion, these unemployed Pharmacists candidates, recently filed a Right to Information Act (RTI) in the respective departments in the District. 

Though the local candidates have applied for the posts of Pharmacists  but no initiative has been taken by the District Administration  as found by the RTI. The unemployed pharmacists who well deserve the posts remain jobless and facing lot of difficulties, all of which are wastage of time and money for applying the posts.

The RTI revealed that on 12^th September selection meeting was organised but the former District Welfare Officer Nabarangpur who was a member of the committee was absent in that meeting.  Notwithstanding the new DWO of Nabarangpur who joined on 14^th September put his signature on the selection proceedings of the committee. The question which, thus, arises how the selection committee appointed the pharmacists without publishing the merit lists of the 157 candidates. Even though there was a alteration and clarification on the appointment of the pharmacists by the Principal Secretary health, government of Odisha. 

Further revealing on the contents of the RTI, on 26^th March Collector Nabarangpur selected seven candidates bypassing the order of the principal secretary health dept. government of  Odisha. Vide letter No 531/16 the collector Nabarangpur directed the CDMO to issue engagement orders to the candidates.

   

Surprisingly on 26^th the CDMO Nabarangpur served the engagement order through the peon. The peon book revels the individual service of the engagement letters to the candidates who are residing at Balasore,  Baragarh, and other districts.

Although the candidates joined on the same day 26^th and 27^th on Sunday which appears illegal appointments.  The appointments were not made in terms of statutory rules. Several qualified persons in terms of the statutory recruitment rules for the post were awaited for justice but the collector directed to issue the engagement orders bypassing all the rules alleged the pharmacists.