Visakhapatnam: Child rights are being violated rampantly in Vizag. Issues such as child labour, child marriages, forced begging, sexual abuse are being reported regularly in the city along with numerous reports of runaway children from other states and missing children.
Vizag Agency areas seem to be safer for children than the city and its suburbs as per the staff of Child Line 1098, a Central government initiative under the ministry of women and child development, while Agency areas report just child marriages, cases from the city span an entire gamut of child rights violation.
Just this year 18 child abuse cases were booked. 44 child marriages were reported, 171 child labour cases, 291 forced begging cases and 434 runaway children between 2011-14.
B. Ravi Kiran, centre coordinator of Child Line Vizag, says, “Most of the child marriage cases are reported from slum areas such as Thatichetlapalem, Arilova and Kallupakalu and remaining from rural and Agency areas like Araku and Munchingiputtu. Girls as young as 14 years old are also forced to get married”.
Mr Kiran further added, “Adolescent girls are forced into child marriage to boys either from the relatives or close friends so as to avoid dowry costs and sometimes even to avoid elopement.”
About sexual abuse cases, K.L. Manohar, one of the nine Child Line workers said, “In most of the child sexual abuse cases which we got, the minor girls were abused by someone close like a cousin, relative, step father or neighbour.”
Forced child begging is also on the rise and it is usually the poor families or migrant workers from other states who force their kids to beg. Runaway kids are a big issue in the city.
About 20-25 child rights violation and abandonment cases of mentally challenged children are received by the Child Line in a year.
The organisation is finding it difficult to find a rehabilitation home for them as very few such homes exist for them in Vizag.
B Ravi Kiran, centre coordinator of Child Line Vizag, said, “While there are about 14 rehabilitation homes for lost and rescued homes separate for boys and girls, just 3-4 exist for mentally challenged. It becomes very difficult for us when we rescue such a kid.”
Citing a recent example, he added, “We had found a three year old mentally challenged girl in the railway station who was abandoned by her parents. As we could not trace the parents we decided to lodge her in one of the homes.”
