Having set up a district task force earlier this week to monitor the implementation of Operation Sarana Balyam, a project aimed at rescuing children from labour and begging, Social Justice Department officials in the district are awaiting a direction from the government for the district-level rollout of the project.
The project is now being run in Pathanamthitta, Kollam, Kottayam and Alappuzha districts, with the government proposing to expand it across the State. Minister for Social Justice K.K. Shylaja had on Monday told the Assembly that 41 children vending various goods and housed in unhygienic conditions had been rescued under the project in the past two years.
The district task force chaired by the District Collector and the District Child Protection Officer as convener also has representatives of police, Health, Education, SC/ST Development and Forest departments. Once a tip-off is received on child labour or beggary, the children will be rescued with police protection, if it so warranted, and produced before the Child Welfare Committee (CWC).
Social Justice Department sources said that it was fully set to implement the project in the district upon receiving directions from the government.
“Rescue officers have been appointed in all the four districts where the project is already under way. We have been permitted to avail the services of these officers in the district till the time such officers are appointed here,” sources said.
Apart from checking child labour and beggary, the project aims at identifying the whereabouts of destitute migrant children found in streets and deporting them back to their homes. That again calls for temporary shelters.
However, the expansion of the project to the rest of the State may have to wait now, as the government proposes to enact a law to ban child labour and beggary. Such a legal backing may be necessary for the execution of the project since DNA test will have to be conducted for scientifically determining whether the women found engaged in begging with children are their biological mothers. Often the physical features of children and women are in such contrast that doubts are raised whether they are biologically related at all, sources said.
Besides, temporary shelters will have to be arranged for the short duration stay of such women and rescued children before ascertaining their whereabouts and taking measures to send them to their original places, especially since children below the age of five cannot be kept alone before being produced before the CWC.
