Central Social Welfare Board to fund two of them

The city police will set up seven more Family Counselling Centres (FCC), two of which will be funded by the Central Social Welfare Board (CSWB), in a bid to provide timely help to women in distress.

CSWB chairperson Prema Cariappa, who visited the women’s helpline centre at the City Police Commissioner’s office here on Wednesday, said the Board has sanctioned seven such centres for the State, two of which would be set up in the city.

Lauding the efforts of the helpline in the commissioner’s office, Ms. Cariappa said the city police already have two FCCs and are planning seven more.

Meanwhile, Police Commissioner Raghavendra H. Auradkar said two of the new FCCs would be set up at Banaswadi to serve South Division and at Malleshwaram to cater to the North Division. This would ensure that people need not come to the Commissioner’s office to seek assistance, he added.

Stating that each police division would have one counselling centre, Mr. Auradkar said the aim is to have one centre at each police station.

Meanwhile, Ms. Cariappa said the CSWB had hiked the salary of counsellors from Rs. 7,000 to Rs. 13,500 a month at the city level and from Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 12,000 in rural areas.

Counsellors told Ms. Cariappa that they were finding it difficult to provide information under the RTI Act as a major part of the counselling is done under confidentiality, to which she said the CSWB would take a decision.

SOS calls

It was also brought to her notice that the helpline gets SOS calls from women facing mental distress. Though the State has around 29 short stay homes to rehabilitate victims, there is no provision to house mentally distressed women, the helpline centre’s co-ordinator, Rani Shetty, said.

Replying to this, Ms. Cariappa said the Board would earmark one short stay home for such persons.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Bangalore / by Special Correspondent / Bangalore – January 29th, 2014