Following up on its ‘Operation Muskaan’ that combed public places and child care centres to identify children reported missing, the Puducherry Police is geared to launch a corollary scheme to provide a new life to orphans.
‘Punnagai’ (which also means smile) is a project to impart vocational skills to destitute children and even find them jobs.
Chief Minister N. Rangasamy is scheduled to launch ‘Punnagai’ on August 29.
Month-long campaign
“Operation Muskaan”, a month-long special campaign, was undertaken by officials of Crime Branch CID Police in July to rescue and rehabilitate the missing/abandoned children in Puducherry.
Police teams had collated the particulars of all the untraced missing children of Union Territory since 2000, and with the help of Social Welfare Department, Child Welfare Committee and NGOs inspected 67 child care homes in Puducherry and Karaikal regions. The orphans and rescued children were screened for a match with missing children data.
Apart from stumbling upon 24 child care institutions which have been functioning without valid licence from competent authority, Operation Muskaan had rescued 14 street children, reunited 13 of them with their parents, and also homed in on 34 children in 15 shelters who were in need of care and support. The identity of these children could not be established due to the fact that neither they know their parents nor their place of origination.
The first batch of about 50 students, which include orphans and school dropouts, in the 16-18 age segment have been identified for the vocational rehabilitation project.
“The scheme will link these children with a time-bound vocational training system through a one-year scholarship involving ten basic trades such as refrigeration, electrical work, housekeeping and automobile servicing,” said Praveer Ranjan, Inspector General of Police.
Support from Rotary Club
Punnagai is being supported by the Rotary Club of Pondicherry Beach Town, Swami Vivekananda Rural Community College (SVRCC) which runs a skill lab and a few companies, which are sponsoring the children and have committed to offer placements once they conclude the training.
The scholarship involves nine months of classes and three months of hands-on training in industrial units.
The scheme crystallised at the stage post-Operation Muskaan when the police found that 34 children had no known family to be re-integrated into. The particulars and photographs of these orphan children, suspected to be the missing children, were collected and the same have been uploaded in the Track Child Web Portal of Ministry of Women and Child Development, and also on the website of Puducherry Police.
“This was when we decided to organise counselling for these children in order to improve their skill sets both academically and vocationally as a means of preparing them for a new life,” said Mr. Ranjan.
The Rotary Club of Pondicherry Beach Town stepped in to support the idea as it was convinced that behaviour modification and skill development were the best means of empowering juveniles fast approaching 18 years of age, according to Praseed Thambi, Rotary Club president.
Set of actions
As Punnagai evolved from an idea to a concrete and comprehensive project, it envisaged a set of actions such as group counselling sessions and motivation program for children from different homes, identifying their skills and to develop them, minimising problem behaviour, imparting behaviour modification for juveniles, delivering therapeutic interventions and vocational training in collaboration with various Government and NGOs.
The Puducherry Police department as well as other stakeholders believe that Punnagai has the potential to become a model for other States to follow.
