Madhya Pradesh: IAS officer shifts his AC for 100 malnourished children

BHOPAL: An IAS officer posted in Umaria district of Madhya Pradesh got AC removed from his office to save around 100 malnourished children from scorching heat. Moved by the initiative of the young collector people started donating and in three days Rs 5 lakh has been collected as donation.
Average temperature of Umaria district has been around 45-46 degrees Celsius in past one week. There are four nutritional rehabilitation centres (NRCs) in Umaria where malnourished children are admitted.More than 90% of 100 children who are admitted in these NRCs are branded by hot iron rods by their tribal parents as they believe it cures malnutrition, which causes their condition to deteriorate further.
As the temperature was rising the children who were admitted in the NRC were also facing severe inconveniences as besides being malnourished they also had burn injuries.
“We have initiated a scheme named Sanjeevani in our district aimed at addressing the problem of malnutrition in our district. There are four NRCs and are around 100 children admitted there. A major difference between the NRCs of other cities like Bhopal and that of Umaria is, here the children are not only malnourished but majority of them are suffering from burn injuries due to branding by hot iron as per the tribal superstitions. Thus the chances of burn infection increases in rising temperatures," district collector Swarochish Somvanshi said.
He added, “there are no specific funds for ACs in NRCs and there was a way of sending a proposal but it would have taken some time. In our local Red Cross society we only had Rs 13,000. And it was also not appropriate to ask any sub-ordinate for shifting his or her AC when I was sitting in an AC chamber. So we shifted the ACs from my chamber and the meeting room. There was one AC in my chamber and three in the meeting room”.
“We did this two days ago, however after the AC was shifted a lot of people have donated in the Red Cross fund and in three days we have been able to collect Rs 5 lakh in the fund. We have already made plans for complete revamp of the NRCs,” he said.