FILE PHOTO: Children play outside of an orphanage in Pyongyang. (Daily NK)

South Pyongan Province recently decided to support orphanages that are struggling due to the lack of government rations and other forms of support, Daily NK has learned.

A source in the province told Daily NK on Monday that the provincial party committee laid out urgent measures to support the facilities as “children are collapsing from hunger because nurseries and schools for orphans in South Pyongan Province have not been receiving supplies from the state.”

According to the source, with the state cutting off rations and other forms of economic support for orphan care facilities in the province, children are going hungry and suffering from serious malnutrition and other diseases.

The party committee of South Pyongan Province called in provincial cadres for an emergency meeting in late July.

The meeting decided on three measures that are now being implemented. 

The committee first decided that the families of provincial, city and county cadres should contribute rice, corn, beans and other grains to support orphan facilities.

The grain department of the provincial people’s committee has been tasked with taking charge of executing the policy.

The committee also decided that the medical teams of provincial hospitals and medical schools, as well as cadre families, should take the lead in collecting and sending medications, including household medications, to orphans in need. The heads of childcare facilities for orphans were told to submit detailed lists of children who receive medicine and the medicines they received for immediate submission to the committee. 

The committee also decided to conclude a cooperative agreement with North and South Hamgyong provinces to bring in seafood as regularly as possible from the coastal regions to bolster the children’s immune systems and stave off malnutrition.

In handing down these decisions, the provincial party committee also ordered that incompetant staff and bookkeepers of orphan care facilities be replaced for allowing the situation to get as bad as it has without taking measures in advance.

The provincial party’s cadre department carried out the personnel changes, the source said. 

“The provincial party committee sacked all the bookkeepers who didn’t properly take care of children’s livelihoods and just whined, and all the incompetant staff who never once shared their opinion with the province and instead complained that the state and province are having a tough time and have no medicine to give, even as lots of children were dying,” he explained. 

The source also said that the committee “mercilessly rebuked” the “inhumanity” of those who “didn’t care if [the orphans] lived or died,” despite the Workers’ Party and Cabinet’s emphasis on caring for children who have lost their parents.

The committee’s cadre department filled the new staff of the orphan care facilities with former military officers or people who worked for the provincial party committee. It also implored the new staff to talk with the committee and resolve problems together when they arise.

The source said that the new staff reported to the committee that when they checked on the condition of the orphans, they found that “almost none were of normal height or weight, and that children who had survived fevers were struggling because they didn’t receive proper meals.” 

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