In news- The children who have lost both parents or surviving parents or legal guardian/adoptive parents due to COVID-19 will be supported under the “PM-CARES for Children” scheme.
About the scheme-
- Under PM CARES, children between 11-18 years will be given admission in any Central Government residential school such as Sainik School, Navodaya Vidyalaya etc…
- In case the child is to be continued under the care of Guardian/ grandparents/ extended family, then he or she will be given admission in the nearest Kendriya Vidyalaya or in a private school as a day scholar.
- If the child is admitted in a private school, the fees as per the RTE norms will be given from the PM CARES that will also pay for expenditure on uniform, textbooks and notebooks.
- The child will be assisted in obtaining an education loan for Professional courses / Higher Education in India as per the existing Education Loan norms and the interest on this loan will be paid by the PM CARES.
- For children who are not eligible under the existing scholarship schemes, PM CARES will provide an equivalent scholarship.
- PM CARES will contribute through a specially designed scheme to create a corpus of Rs 10 lakh for each child when he or she reaches 18 years of age.
- This corpus will be used to give a monthly financial support/ stipend from 18 years of age, for the next five years to take care of his/ her personal requirements during the period of higher education.
- On reaching the age of 23 years, he/ she will get the corpus amount as one lump-sum for personal and professional use.
- All children will be enrolled as a beneficiary under Ayushman Bharat Scheme (PM-JAY) with a health insurance cover of Rs. 5 lakhs and the premium amount for these children till the age of 18 years will be paid by PM CARES.
Source: The Hindu
