AS-WOMEN CENTRE
- Country:
- India
A centre was opened
in this central Assam town on Saturday to provide shelter and
support services to survivors of rape and other forms of
violence against women and girls.
The one stop centre (OSC) for those women, was
set up by the Hailakandi district administration and the
social welfare department in collaboration with an NGO.
The OSC would be a place where integrated services
police assistance, legal aid, medical and counselling services
would be made available to the women victims of violence,
Additional Deputy Commissioner Amalendu Roy said at the
launching of the centre.
A toll free help number 181 is being made available to
women in distress, Roy said.
The OSC could fill a critical need for support
services for survivors of rape and other forms of violence
against women and girls, said Kabir Ahmed, secretary of
Wodwichee, the NGO.
"It can also serve as an educational resource for
healthcare workers, police, lawyers, and judges," he added.
The OSCs were prioritised under the Nirbhaya Fund set
up by the central government in 2013, after public protests
following the gangrape and murder of a young woman in New
Delhi in 2012, and long-held demands by women's rights groups,
official sources said.
The Ministry of Women and Child Development formulated
a centrally sponsored scheme for setting up OSCs in order to
fight the issues related to gender-based violence, the sources
said.
The scheme was implemented on April 1, 2015 and is
popularly known as Sakhi. Around 234 such OSCs were
established across the country, they said.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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