The Child Protection and Welfare Bureau (CPWB) has rescued 18 runaway and street children during the last week from different parts of the city.
According to a bureau spokesperson, most of the children were found begging in the streets and others were addicted to drugs. “Most of these children have grown up on the streets and we seldom notice their circumstances. The CPWB is taking an initiative to recover and rehabilitate as many street children as it can,” said CPWB official Badar Qasim. CPWB officials said that the recovered children included Mudassar, Mubasshar, Ali Hasan, Adeel, Atif, Bilal, Imran, Kashif Azeem, Hashim, Muhammad Kashif, Mukhtar, Hamid, Noor Muhammad, Qaisar Iqbal, Adil, Babar, Muhammad Atif and Kamran.
“Nearly all of these children were involved in beggary and others were hooked on drugs,” said social worker Mehtab Shakeel. “One of the children I have been working with is a heroin addict and he is only nine years old,” she added. “We are trying to get him medical help for the detox process but there are many more like him out there,” she added.
CPWB worker Mukhtar said that many of the children at the centre were also garbage collectors.
“These children have been forced to work and collect trash to support their families but we are trying to rehabilitate them. They will be made wards of state and then we will work to ensure that they can be returned to their parents.
This will only be done if we have enough evidence that they won’t be back on the streets,” he added.
Mukhtar said that at present the CPWB centre was housing a total of 64 children. “These kids are being provided with the best educational and vocational training possible and we hope that their time here will help make them productive members of society in the years to come,” he added.
He said that the families of 12 children had already been traced out during previous week and the parents were called in for interviews. “We have handed back some of the children after completing legal formalities after producing the children before the court,” he said, adding “now that they are already in the system if their parents fail to comply with directives they will become permanent wards of state.”
Informal education and entertainment facilities are also being provided to 14 children at the centre. “I am glad to have been taken off the streets. I have been with the centre for almost a week and it means I get three square meals a day without having to beg and I am also in school,” said Hamid, 11.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 12th, 2012.
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@Can any one help me? first of all thnx ...and 2nd you dont need to catch just dial 1121 our help line and rescue team will be their with in 10 min .....
I am very satisfied to know and read about CPWB, as i daily see children every where in every city begging and very deperate condition and also observe that their parents and all family members are around there as in neraby stop or shop,and at least CPWB is here to work. if i want to catch someone and handover to CPWB but i let go thinking that how can i help, when all his family is around secondly i become weak in my intention and cant get courage from my inside, however i feel pain to seeing children on streets, Can any one help me?, how should i do.to rescue a child and locate CPWB to handover.