PANJIM: As the debate on the vulnerability of children lodged at child care and shelter homes intensifies, in the wake of baby selling racket at Ranchi, Goa government claims to have already put in place a system to ensure Goa does not face such cases.
Women and Child Development Department Director Dipak Desai claimed that the department is sensitive towards these issues and care is taken to ensure children are in safe hands. “We have brought in a new system wherein before admitting any child to any home and before his/her release, permission from the child welfare committee is a must. Moreover, these children should be produced before the CWC for these processes,” Desai said.
Tangled over the fact that for the last few years numerous children’s homes operated illegally, the State finally acted to register the institutions or shut them down. The result is that 38 Children’s Homes, Special Homes, Open Shelter Homes and Special Adoption Agency have been registered with the Directorate of Women & Child Development in the first half of 2018.
Details available with Herald show that 77 child care institutions are registered with the department. Only one child care home remains to be registered and its inspection by the district inspection committee has been scheduled. Sources said around 4,000 children, around 700 of them from other States, are housed at these homes.
“We have to clean the system. Some child care institutions were operating without proper registration although it did not come under the purview of the JJA,” Desai said.
Hence, the department has also decided to cleanse institutions which were earlier registered despite being ineligible. Besides weeding out these homes, some institutions have approached the government seeking ‘deregistration’ claiming they do not come under the purview of the Juvenile Justice Act. Out of four Children’s Homes, one has already been ‘deregistred’ while the applications of some others are pending.
“Since these institutions are operating as boarding schools, where fees are charged from the children, they do not come under the JJA. As such, four institutions have written to the department of which one has been cleared. For the remaining, approvals will be granted only after thorough scrutiny and inspection,” an officer said.
These four institutions – one of which is a non-institutional care service – are located at Margao, Verna and Belloy.
The department had recently held a meeting with the concerned stakeholders to streamline the system and ensure that child care institutions are registered under the JJA and adhere to the Act and its rules.
