Contraceptives rot in Orissa family welfare dept store

Contraceptives rot in Orissa family welfare dept store
HIMANSU S SAHOO

BHUBANESWAR, DEC 25: Take A glance at the central store of the Family Welfare Department of the State Government and you get a first hand knowledge of how and where the family planning programme went wrong in Orissa. And, of course, how serious the department is about curbing the spiralling population growth and checkmating the spread of the dreaded AIDS.

What greets you in the store are hundreds of cartons of condom packets and lakhs of oral contraceptive pills strewn carelessly on the floor. Most of these are damaged and the rest are on the way to getting damaged. A rough calculation reveals that more than 200 cartons, each containing about 50,000 packets of condoms of Nirodh brand, and about 50 cartons of contraceptive pills, containing about one lakh pills of different brands, lay scattered in a damaged state on the floor. Another 300-odd cartons of condoms and one hundred cartons of oral pills are on the way to a similar fate.

If the wastage was not enough of a pointer to the functioning of the family planning programme, there are thefts that take place through the broken gate behind the store.

Hundreds of cartons of condoms and pills, reportedly, escape through the gate. The authorities and the persons assigned the job to protect the goods are ignorant about the pilferage and damage.

Ironically, this all is taking place when prostitutes from red light areas of Paradip, Keonjhar, Koraput and Bhubaneswar have been refused an increase in their quota of condoms and pills.

The items are sanctioned through the district medical offices.

According to department sources, to meet the demands of condoms and pills of various districts as required by the chief district medical officers (CDMOs) every year, the Family Welfare department receives nearly 25 million condoms and several millions pills. In the year 1999-2000, the department had asked Government of India for 24 million condoms.

So far nearly 10.5 million condoms have reached the department for distribution.

But either due to the tardy distribution process or due to irregularities in calculating the requirement, the condoms and pills at the central store have not been distributed.

When contacted, the director of Family Welfare department Dr S K Mohanty expressed his ignorance about the damages. Supporting the claim of Mohanty, joint director of the department Dr S Mohanty said ``since we receive the exact number of condoms and pills as per the requirement of the CDMOs, there is no room for anything going waste''.