The Tribune: New Delhi: Wednesday, September
26, 2018.
Everyday 18 children go missing in Delhi
and six remain of every 10 children going missing remain untraced, reveals a
report released today by the Alliance for People's Rights (APR), a collective
of child rights groups, and NGO Child Rights and You (CRY).
Based on the National Crime Records
Bureau (NCRB) data and RTI replies from police, Delhi tops the chart when it
comes to the number of missing children with the total missing children being
6,450 (3,915 girls and 2,535 boys) in 2017 while the city also beats the
national average of children remaining untraceable (30 per cent) with its 63
per cent.
“While the role of the police is
paramount with regard to the issue of missing children, the Integrated Child
Protection Scheme (ICPS) suggests community-level preventive mechanisms to
tackle the issue,” said Soha Moitra, the Regional Director (North), CRY.
To ensure that a robust preventive
mechanism is in place, a model system was introduced by APR and CRY in the form
of community vigilance. This highlighted how people from every community could
be empowered and entrusted with the task of observing the children in their
locale, and to look out for any sign of danger or potential harm that can
befall them.
“Seen in this light, the system and
society have to come together to prevent the children from going missing, as
the responsibility of creating a reliable safety net around children lies both
with the state and the community. Taking cognisance of the enormity of the
issue, ensuring inter and intra-state coordination in investigation, rescue and
rehabilitative mechanism and investing in adequate resources and trained
personnel at every level are the needs of the hour,” Soha added.
In a couple of instances where a child
was found to be missing, the vigilance groups were able to take immediate
action to notify the authorities which ensured early recovery of the child, she
underlined.
The report further revealed that the
number of missing children in the age group of 12-18 years is the highest and
among them the number of girls are much more than boys. The reasons include
child labour, commercial sex work, forced marriage, domestic work and forced
begging.
District Commissioner of Police (Crime
Branch) Joy Tirkey said that the improvement in the participation of civil
society is a good sign. “We’ve to work more in tandem with Anti Human
Trafficking Units as well as the communities and NGOs,” he said.
He also added that a facial recognition
system will be launched in a week’s time that will help in tracing the children
who go missing.