In last one year,Pangurha has sheltered 18 abandoned girls With the arrival of another girl child on Sunday,the total number of baby girls received by Pangurha a cradle set up by the district administration here a year ago has reached 18. Over 1,000 baby girls,according to records available with the police and NGOs,are abandoned on roads,inside bushes,in gutters and dustbins in the Majha region alone every year. Over 90 per cent children rescued by Pangurha are girls,who were only a few days old when they were abandoned. The cradle takes such children to the nearby EMC Hospital,where their medical check up is done,and later,with help from Jalandhar-based Child Adoption House,helps issueless couples adopt them. Pangurha is situated in the corner of the road,with no one to watch when someone wants to abondon their unwanted child here, said Deputy Commissioner K S Pannu,the brain behind the cradle. He added: It is unfortunate that some people still see girls as burden and throw them away. Recalling the setting up of the Pangurha,Pannu said he came up with the idea in 2009 when he found an abandoned baby girl on Majitha road and thought there should be a mechanism in place so that the child at least remains unhurt. The girl child appears to be unwanted in Punjab,which shamefully records one of the lowest sex ratios in the country. Sometimes,parents might have a number of children and unable to feed them,they abonden their own kids, said Mandhir Pannu,wife of K S Pannu who had been spearheading the scheme. Disturbed by the trend of abandoning the girl child,the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) is planning to keep similar cradles in front of gurdwaras,as announced by its president Avtar Singh Makkar recently. Kirat Sandhu,head of Punnarjyot,a social awareness NGO,said: Even if the child survives foeticide,the newborn is discarded like an unwanted material. This is a social evil that needs to be checked through social and legal measures. Think beyond Nanhi Chhan,punish medical criminals CHANDIGARH: Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal should go beyond the political rhetoric of Nanhi Chhan and buckle down to implementing the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act in Punjab. This advice to the Bathinda MP came from Dr Sabu George,a social activist actively involved in formulating the amendments that strengthened the PCPNDT Act in 2002. Dr Sabu,who didnt pull punches while criticising the lax attitude of the state government,told The Indian Express that Punjab feels that Nanhi Chhan has taken care of its skewed sex ratio and there was no need to put in more efforts. He said Harsimrats sloganeering may have cut a wide swath,but it was more important to punish medical criminals. Very few cases under the PCPNDT Act have been registered in Punjab,and the conviction rate is abysmally low, he said. Worried over the trend of doctors advertising on the Internet and lining their pockets,he said he had taken up the matter with Harsimrat and also asked her to raise it in the Lok Sabha,as most of the people approaching these doctors were from Punjab. But she didnt give any response, he alleged. The Punjab Health Departments practice of giving awards to panchayats that have shown improvement in sex ratio also drew his flak. Authorities forget that if few villages have done well,there are hundreds that have fared poorly, he added. Jasneet Bindra
