Order on minimum standards for old age homes welcomed

Chennai: In a major relief to the senior citizens, the state government has informed the Madras high court that it has issued a fresh order dated November 23 last revising the minimum and essential standards to be maintained by old age homes run by NGOs.

Government pleader M.K.Subramaniam made his submission to this effect when a PIL filed by S.Krishnamurthy of T.Nagar, which sought a direction to the authorities concerned to frame regulations and appoint a regulatory authority to monitor the functioning of the senior citizen homes with a time frame, cane up for hearing before a division bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R.Mahadevan.

The government pleader said 30 suggestions given by persons having interest in the field have been incorporated in the new G.O issued by the Social Welfare and Nutritious Mean Programme.

In all, 57 suggestions were received from interested persons, which included the petitioner. The Union government and the state social welfare direction found 30 suggestions to be relevant and all of them had been included in the G.O, which will be implemented with immediate effect, he added.

Expressing satisfaction with the G.O, the petitioner suggested that there should be a sincere endeavour to inspect the existing homes to ensure that they were complaint and efforts should be made to locate the unregistered homes and they should be visited for consequences of non-registration.

After the government pleader assured the bench that on both the aspects, serious effort would be made, the bench closed the PIL while appreciating the constructive role of the state government and the counsel for the state and central governments and the petitioner in taking up the issue, the result of which was to the G.O. Earlier, the government issued an order dated February 9, which had been rejected by the petitioner and the bench on the ground that it was not comprehensive enough to deal with all issues.