The NCPCR (National Commission for Protection of Child Rights) in an affidavit filed before the Supreme Court has stated that 9,246 children have either lost one or the other parent due to the Covid-19 pandemic. These include 1,742 children who lost both parents, 7,464 now in a single-parent household, and 140 who have been abandoned from March 2020 to May 29, 2021. However, most state governments have not been able to provide complete information regarding children who have lost their parents due to the pandemic. A web portal ‘Bal Swaraj’ was launched by NCPCR through which each district can upload information about children during the pandemic.
Recently, in a major welfare scheme for children who have been orphaned due to Covid-19, the Central government has announced a monthly stipend once they turn 18 and a fund of Rs 10 lakh when they turn 23 from PM-Cares Fund. However, it is not yet known how many children are beneficiaries of this scheme, though government said children who have lost parents, adoptive parent, etc would be its beneficiaries. On June 1, the Supreme Court asked the Centre to provide details of the scheme and how the scheme will be implemented along with the mechanism devised to monitor it.
According to the Centre, all children who lost both parents or a surviving parent, legal guardian or adoptive parents due to Covid-19 disease will be supported by a corpus of Rs 10 lakh from the PM-Cares Fund. This corpus will be used for providing a monthly stipend for five years when the children are 18 years of age. This corpus will be used to give a monthly financial support or stipend from 18 years of age for the next five years to take care of his or her personal requirements during the period of higher education. On reaching the age of 23 years, they will get the corpus amount as one lump-sum for personal and professional use. For higher education, children will be assisted in obtaining education loan for professional courses or higher education in India according to existing norms. The interest on this loan will be paid from the PM-Cares fund.
In addition, the Centre has also announced further measures to help families who lost the earning member due to the pandemic. The government will be providing pension to families who lost their breadwinner due to coronavirus. This benefit will be available retrospectively with effect from March 24 last year and for all such cases till March 24, 2022. Under the Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC), dependent family members of persons who died of Covid-19 will get a pension equivalent to 90 per cent of the average daily wage drawn by the worker as per the existing norms.
The government has also enhanced and liberalised insurance compensationunder the Employees’ Deposit Linked Insurance (EDLI) to help the families of employees who have lost their lives due to Covid-19. As per the enhancedinsurance benefits under the EDLI scheme, the amount of maximum insurance benefit has been increased from Rs 6 lakh to Rs 7 lakh. The provision of a minimum insurance benefit of Rs 2.5 lakh has been restored and will apply retrospectively from February 15, 2020 for the next three years. Further, to benefit families of contractual/casual workers, the condition of continuous employment in only one establishment has been liberalised, to benefit families of even those employees who may have changed jobs in the last twelve months preceding his/her death.
