Reassuring reunion: Child Bureau reunites children with parents

CPB officials returned 14 children to their families, with assurances that the children would be placed in school.

MULTAN:

Child Protection Bureau (CPB) officials returned 14 children to the custody of their parents in Multan on Friday afternoon.

Bureau officials told reporters that over 32 children were currently being housed at the district child protection offices. “Nearly all of these children were picked off the streets and we are now schooling them and providing them with boarding and lodging,” said CPB official Raheem Shahzad.

“When we picked up most of these children we conducted an initial inquiry into who their parents were. Separate cases were registered and filed for each child but we didn’t return them to their parents until we were sure that they would not be put back on the streets to beg,” he said.

According to child protection officials, all of the children are placed under state protection the moment they are picked up by the bureau. “We are at liberty not to return a child to the parents if we have doubts but these families have been working with us to regain custody,” he said.

A teacher at the school for the CPB, Naseem, said that all of the children had been allowed to meet their parents once-a- week and the parents were given counseling. “We helped them secure jobs and the women were inducted into vocational training courses under other government schemes,” she said. “Now the children are being returned with the understanding that if they are not in school they will become permanent wards of state,” she added.

Nigehban, a social welfare centre of the Punjab government working for children, also helped rehabilitate the 14 children. Nigehban coordinator Sana Zulfiqar said that she had helped organise clothing, books and other supplies for children at the CPB offices while they were staying there. “Now that they are being returned we will monitor their progress every month,” she said.

Zulfiqar said that her NGO team as well as CPB teams regularly toured the city and randomly picked up children found begging and working at stores.

“Once the children are part of the system we can help rehabilitate them. The first three months are an adjustment period but then we allow family visits if the parents come to claim their children,” she said.

“There are many children, whose parents never come to claim them and they remain wards of state and will be schooled in government institutions,” she said.

Seven of the 14 children were brought to the centre by a Nigehban team and five others were already staying at the centre. The children who have returned with their parents include Raza, 5, Shazia, 10, Irum, 6, Faiza, 12, Shahid, 8, Khurrum, 6, Abdullah, 6, Salman, 5, Usman, 10 and Naila, 8. “We are so happy to finally be taking our son and daughter home with us after nine months of them being at the centre,” said Usman and Irum’s parents Kareemullah and Asma Bibi.

“We had no money to take care of them all those months ago and we were wrong to depend on them to help support us but now the centre has helped us get back on our feet,” Asma said. “We will never make the same mistake again. Both my children will go to school and receive vocational training at the centre,” Kareemullah said, adding that a CPB counselor had already helped him enroll his children for training courses.

“We arranged a function for the children and gave them a nice send off. I hope that we don’t see them here again and that they can manage to turn their lives around,” said CPB guard Khadim Mubashar.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 16^th, 2011.