Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government has achieved its target of setting up One Stop Centres (OSCs) in each district from the Nirbhaya funds mandated to be spent on women safety.
The government has approved a total of 30 OSCs in the state out of which the government has 30 such operational centres, meeting their 100 per cent target unlike many other states which are yet to achieve their targets.
According to official figures, the state has managed to reach out to 2937 women in distress.
One Stop Centre Scheme, under Nirbhaya Fund, has been implemented April 1, 2015. The Union government approved setting up of 483 such centers in the country for violence affected women across the country in the year 2018.
As of now, a total of 728 such centers have been approved in 724 districts across the country. Out of these, 680 OSCs are operational so far including 30 from Odisha.
The objective of these OSCs is to provide immediate, emergency and non-emergency access to a range of services under one roof including medical help, police facilitation, psychological counselling, legal counselling and temporary shelter to women affected by violence.
The ministry of women and child development which has been handling the scheme, however, mandated that such centers should not be stationed at hospitals, however some centers in Odisha started such centers on hospital premises.
The ministry had first started opening one such centre in each state in the maiden phase. During the first phase, one such centre was opened in Bhubaneswar at Capital Hospital. In the expansion phase, each district from Odisha got one such centre.