225 govt employees are drug addicts in Arunachal

Itanagar: As many as 225 Arunachal Pradesh government employees have reported that they are addicts and consume either natural or synthetic drugs, officials said.

The state government had in a recent notification made it mandatory for all employees to report their addiction.

State chief secretary Naresh Kumar on Wednesday directed the health and family welfare department to come out with an action plan to rehabilitate the addicted government employees in a time-bound manner. He also directed the anti-narcotics cell to aggressively strike at the source of supply of narcotic drugs and catch key drug peddlers, an official communique said.

Speaking at a meeting here, he suggested that the addicts may be categorized into three categories based on their level of addiction. “Necessary counselling, treatments, rehabilitation, and follow-ups should be as per their level of addiction,” Kumar said.

To restrict drug addiction among government officials, officers of the departments of police, education and health, and family welfare would be randomly selected and tested in the first phase. The initiative would be coordinated by respective deputy commissioners, superintendents of police, and district medical officers and should be completed by December this year, he said.

“This task is to be accomplished without any delay and in a time-bound manner,” the chief secretary stressed.

Partner NGOs for every district may be involved in follow-up programmes for the addicts after the rehabilitation programme to avoid any relapse, he added. The meeting was held to discuss issues of drug abuse and de-addiction strategy with the state’s principal secretary (home), secretaries to the health and family welfare and tax, excise and narcotics departments, and additional director general of police among others, the communique said.