From this weekend, the city will get 10 more Police Boys and Girls Clubs (PBGC) to mould children from slums. This will take the number of PBGCs in the city to 15.
The new clubs will function from the Corporation school premises and have activities such as sports and games, room for reading and also counselling and career guidance programmes.
The first PBGC in the city was established at Puliyakulam in 1961. It was functioning under the supervision of the Ramanathapuram Police Station. In the late 1990s, such clubs started functioning under the Ukkadam, R.S. Puram, Variety Hall Road and Race Course police station limits also.
“A couple of them became defunct over the years. We are reviving the defunct clubs and starting new ones,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) S. Lakshmi. She added that the police and PBGC volunteers had identified children from nearby slums in the age group of 13 to 19 years.
Ms. Lakshmi said that priority was to identify juvenile offenders who were arrested by the police, drug and alcohol addicts, children of convicts and serial offenders, children of mischief mongers and those who are irregular to school and in need of counselling or guidance. The centres would be open for not less than two hours every evening after school hours.
Each club would have a scout master to train children in sports and physical activities and a caretaker to supervise activities of the teenagers.
Stating that the scout master and caretaker only had meagre honorarium ranging around Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 1,500, the DCP said persons for this position were selected based on their eagerness to serve deserving children.
The government allots a nominal fund for the clubs to buy sports equipments and books. But this is not sufficient and this is where volunteers play an important role.
Chief coordinator of the PBGC for Coimbatore City B. Karthikeyan said that the one at Puliyakulam had been the most successful one so far. “Youth from the club won nine gold medals, 12 bronze and seven silver medals at a State level Silambattam competition last year,” he said.
Mr. Karthikeyan said that moulding students at these clubs was a Herculean task as many of them did not know what discipline meant. “The four existing clubs have around 300 teenagers including about 100 girls as members. With opening of new clubs the numbers will go past 600,” he said.
According to him, initially 25 to 30 children have been identified for every new club and it will be an ongoing process.
However, he said the number of children coming to the clubs will be fluctuating, as some children did not come there regularly.
“We can only motivate them to come here and make activities interesting for attracting such children for the betterment of their future,” he said.
