Recently, as a train finished its scheduled run at the Central railway station, a 15-year-old boy preferred not to get down even after all the passengers had disembarked. He had untreated burns on his arms and body.
The childline help desk at the station spotted him and was taken to Government Medical College Hospital. As he was being treated, he grew agitated and lashed out at people. He even had to be tied up.
At children’s home
He was later shifted to the General Hospital and then to the children’s home at Poojappura where he is doing well though he keeps mum about his story and how he landed up here.
Had the childline help desk not spotted him, the boy would have been on the streets. The help desk here has been set up as per the Railway Childline project of the Ministry of Railways and the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
The help desk spotted 247 such cases till October 11, the maximum being 40 in September. Of the 247 children, 219 were boys. The help desk here is one of the four in the State, the others being at Ernakulam, Thrissur, and Kozhikode. It is managed by the Don Bosco Veedu Society, while the nodal agency is the Loyola Extension Services.
Though a booth had been functioning at the station since 2009 as an outreach centre of the society shelter home with only 150-odd cases reported a year, it was only after a round-the-clock help desk started functioning since February that more interventions could be made.
Contrary to the perception most of the children reaching the city on trains were from other States, 107 of the 247 children were from Kerala itself.
Issues affecting children
Problems at home or school were spurring children to run away, Fr. P.D. Thomas, Director, Thiruvananthapuram Don Bosco Veedu Society and Childline, said.
As many as 142 of the 247 children were runaways, while 49 were students who were missing classes and spending time on Railway premises.
Ten were working children, while two were children with special needs, and two had been sexually abused.
Sixty-seven of the children were from Tamil Nadu, and 11 each from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Significantly, three of the children were from Nepal. A number of the children had been found by Railway Protection Force (RPF) or Government Railway Police (GRP) personnel or travelling ticket examiners (TTEs), and the remaining by the help desk staff.
The help desk staff not only walk through trains reaching the station to identify unaccompanied, missing, trafficked or runaway children, but also watch the platforms.
The children are produced in front of the Juvenile Justice Board or the Child Welfare Committee as the case may be.
If produced before the CWC, the parents are informed and the children restored to them through the CWC.
The Don Bosco Veedu Society also trains the RPF and GRP personnel, and the TTEs in the standard operating procedure formulated in 2015 for child care and protection activities.
