Delta State Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Women Affairs, Mrs. Kevwe Agas, and the State’s Child Rights Implementation Committee, has paid an advocacy visit to the Commissioner in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Mordi Ononye.
The visit was to discuss issues concerning rights of survival, development, and protection of children in the State.
The Committee requested that the Commissioner approves the creation of a Desk Officer at Government Hospitals to ensure that victims of gender violence get quick attention in the state.
The Committee also requested for a waiver of payments of medical bills from indigent victims of violence for seamless protection of rights of children in such circumstances.
Responding to the committee’s request, Ononye asked the Director of Hospital Services to see him to work out the modalities assuring that the Desk Officer’s request would be approved at least for Government Hospitals in urban areas.
The Committee also visited the Correctional Service where they requested that issues of underaged inmates and challenges of children born by female inmates be resolved. They requested that the Magistrates be advised that children in conflict with the law be remanded only at the Remand Home.
The Controller of Correctional Service, Mr. Ovie Friday Esezobor, explained that they had always ensured children were not kept in Correctional Centres adding that children delivered by female inmates were only kept for one year and six months before being sent to their relatives or religious bodies until their mothers finish their sentences.
Esezobor however, noted that the Social Welfare Officers must be involved to legally take care of the children and commit them to any of the orphanages until their mothers were done with their jail terms.
Meanwhile, the Permanent Secretary (Mrs. Agas), who is the Chairman of the Committee promised to provide details of the Social Welfare Officers in different local government areas of the state for quick action.
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