KARACHI: A day before Punjab Child Protection Bureau officials are due to hand over 12 street children of Sindh to it, Sindh has no child protection authority to safeguard those children and provide skill development facilities to them before searching for their families to hand them over, it emerged on Tuesday.

Officials in the provincial social welfare department said they would take the custody of the children seized by the Punjab officials from criminals or found wandering about. However, they conceded that they had not yet got the facility to accommodate those children and would have to hand them over to certain child protection facility in the private sector.

The fact highlights how the provincial government defaults in completing its homework — in the social sector particularly — that could have protected a large young population if it had been completed in time.

Despite a lapse of more than three years to the enactment of the Sindh Child Protection Authority Act, meant to provide for the establishment of an authority to ensure the rights of the children in need of special protection measures, the government is dragging its heels over such a body, which, as the law stipulates should have come into being within 60 days of the enactment of the law.

Officials in the Sindh welfare department said they were still waiting for the issuance of a notification of relevant rules, a prerequisite for the establishment of the authority meant to monitor child protection related issues at the provincial and district levels.

The Sindh Assembly passed the Sindh Child Protection Authority Bill in May 2011 and the governor assented to the bill in June, to ensure the rights of children — people up to the age of 18 — who need special protection measures.

Sources blamed the government for the delays in making bylaws that hindered the establishment of the SCPA.

According to the law, a child protection officer may, in case of a child in need of special protection measures, ask relevant authorities for an appropriate action.

The officer may, in consultation with a child protection committee, apply to the magistrate concerned for taking into custody a child if he/she requires special protection measures.

Whenever a child is taken into custody, he/she should immediately be taken to the nearest child protection institution for temporary accommodation till appropriate orders are passed by the appropriate authority, the SCPA act says.

A child in need of special protection measure includes a child who is victim of violence, abuse and exploitation; subjected to physical and psychological violence, sexual abuse or commercial sexual exploitation; forced into the worst forms of child labour, exploitative labour or beggary; subjected to human trafficking within and outside Pakistan; being misused for drug trafficking or subjected to abuse of substances like glue drugs, spirit; engaged in an armed conflict; without primary care givers; and affected or infected with HIV/Aids.

The SPCA, among other functions, shall have powers to coordinate and monitor child protection related issues at provincial and district levels and ensure rights of children in need of special protection measures.

It shall have powers to support and establish institutional mechanism for child protection issues and to set the minimum standards for social, rehabilitative, re-integrative and reformatory institutions and services and ensure their implementation.

It shall also function to set the minimum standards for all other institutions relating to children, such as educational institutions, orphanages, shelter homes, remand homes, certified schools, youthful offender workplaces, child parks and hospitals, and ensure their implementation, it has further been learnt.

Officials said that draft rules regarding the establishment, appointment, infrastructure and actions of the SCPA, after vetting by the Sindh law department, had been approved by competent authorities months ago and they were just waiting for a gazette notification to see it established.

The government had claimed that it was about to complete a large complex to house the offices of the SCPA and to provide residential, educational and training skill development facilities. However, its completion is still awaited.

Child rights activists believe that the children in need could not be benefited from the law despite its passage three years ago after the enactment.

They said constant delays had worsened the situation. However, even if the authority was established in its present shape with the minister-in-charge of the social welfare department as its chairman it would hardly serve the purpose.

“The authority should be an autonomous institution as it should be because it has to look after all the child protection facilities being run by the government and the private sector,” said Iqbal Thebo of the Save the Children.

Besides, he said a representative from the health department should be a part of the authority’s composition for the reason that the lives of the thousands of children were risked or perished every year, which should also be a part of the authority’s mandate to protect every child.

The secretaries of the social welfare, the home and the labour departments are part of the authority’s present setup. Besides, two provincial assembly members, two lawyers having experience in child rights and two representatives of non-governmental organisations working for welfare and development of children would be its members.

Officials said with the passage of the SCPA the previous provincial commission on child welfare and development ceased to exist, creating a vacuum as to who was responsible to regulate all the child protection facilities in the province.

The previous commission, too, sources said, had hardly held a meeting in its few years of life to serve its basic purpose.

Published in Dawn, July 23rd , 2014