the goan I network
PANAJI
A 13-year-old girl who has her home in the vicinity of Caculo Mall in St Inez spends her day sleeping and simply lying around the chawl her home is in, not engaging in any sensible activity.
Her parents refuse to send her to school, fearing for her safety. As a one-year-old, the child reportedly suffered from brain damage following a bout of abnormally high fever.
Ever since, she suffers from fits occasionally, tends to lose balance when walking, her speech is wayward for a 13-year-old and vocabulary weak.
According to Sarmila Ghosh, a Disability Rights Association of Goa (DRAG) volunteer who by chance discovered the child’s plight, she appears to have intellectual disability (ID) but the extent of it is unknown and her parents refuse to get her assessed.
Sarmila who has unsuccessfully attempted to convince the family to admit the child to a school told ‘The Goan’ after visiting the girl and her family of seven on Saturday that she has already arranged for admission to the Disha School for Special Children in Panjim.
All that’s keeping the child from getting a shot at education is the family’s consent.
“Her parents keep saying they are waiting for her to get better to send her to school,” Sarmila revealed.
The most recent attempt that Sarmila made to convince the family was Saturday. A trained special educator herself, she visited the family together with former Sanjay School teacher Gianna Simoes but the duo were stiffly resisted. The girl’s grandmother told them not to interfere.
The third of four siblings, the girl’s younger 10-year-old sister attends school. Her two older siblings are already bread-earners. Her mum is a home-maker and her dad works at a city pharmacy.
It’s a copy book case of the ‘State’ falling short in shouldering its responsibility to ensure her fundamental and compulsory right to free education under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, said a source from the North Goa Child Welfare Committee.
While the Committee can take suo motu cognisance of such cases, we need to be alerted by way of a formal complaint, the source said. “Implementation of this Act is the responsibility of the State. There is no particular penalty for parents who do not send their children to school,” said the source.
Sarmila, a former employee at the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), claims that each SSA branch has a cluster resource person (CRP) who gets paid to go house to house and identify children who do not go to school.
‘The Goan’ was unable to get through to the Commissioner of the Goa State Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (GSCPCR).
While the parents refuse to let their unfortunate child go to school fearing for her safety, the remedy they are choosing of keeping her at home could possibly be the very cause of harm as many a times she is just lying around in the chawl unattended, fears Sarmila.
