Nirbhaya fund: committee to consider proposals passed by wcd ministry

The proposals include breastfeeding rooms at Bengaluru bus stands, a cyber cell in Bhubaneswar and CCTVs across a few cities Proposals that have been cleared by the Woman and Child

Development Ministry (WCD) will be taken up for consideration by the Empowered Committee of the Nirbhaya Fund in its next meeting, slated to be held later this month. The proposals include

breastfeeding rooms at Bengaluru bus stands, a cyber cell in Bhubaneswar and CCTVs across a few cities. The schemes that have been cleared by the WCD Ministry include two from the state of

Odisha. While one of the proposals is to install CCTV cameras in vulnerable spots in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack, the other is to come up with a cyber cell in Bhubaneswar. In Bengaluru, too, one

of the proposals put forward by the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) is to install CCTV cameras in BMTC buses. Another proposal is to train female conductors and drivers,

and institute a co-operative fund to help them buy their own vehicles in the future. The BMTC has also sent a proposal to have breastfeeding rooms at several bus stands in the city.

"The amount to be disbursed under the Fund will be decided by the Empowered Committee later this month. In all, over eight projects will be taken up for consideration before it heads to

the committee," said an official from the ministry. An project proposed by the Maharashtra government was not cleared as it was already receiving funds under Beti Bachao Beti Padhao

scheme, while the Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation will present a project later this week. The Nirbhaya Fund, a corpus of over Rs 3,000 crore, was formed in the aftermath of

the gruesome gang rape of Jyoti Singh, a paramedic student, in the capital on December 16 in 2012. The empowered committee, that clears projects under the Fund, was constituted in 2015. The

committee has secretaries of the ministries of home, WCD, road transport and highways, DEITY, the chairman of the railway board, and conducts financial appraisals of the funds released for

the schemes. In the same year, the WCD ministry was made the nodal ministry.