KARACHI: The federal ministry of human rights has informed the Sindh High Court that it moved a summary to the cabinet last month for establishment of the Zainab Alert Response and Recovery Agency (ZARRA) for missing and abducted children.

The ministry in its reply submitted that the Zainab Alert Response and Recovery Act was promulgated in March last year and rules could only be framed once the agency was established and notified.

When a two-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar took up a petition seeking establishment of ZARRA, implementation of the act and formation of rules, an assistant attorney general submitted the reply of the ministry of human rights.

The ministry stated that it had forwarded a summary to the federal cabinet on Feb 16 for its approval and establishment of ZARRA as provided under Section 3 (1) of the act and as per statutory requirement rules would be framed after formation of the agency.

It further maintained that the ministry was also preparing standard operating procedures for smooth functioning of ZARRA.

The agency will deal with cases of missing and kidnapped children across the country

The post of the agency’s director general had been advertised and candidates were also shortlisted. A summary in this regard was prepared and being sent to the prime minister as soon as the federal cabinet approved and notified the establishment of the agency, it added.

The ministry further stated that the PC-I had been prepared for upgrade of the existing helpline (1099).

The Zainab alert app launched in October last year had also been linked with the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, it added.

It said that the Zainab alert performance dashboard was functional and there were 170 dashboards being monitored across the country and so far over 240 cases had been registered through the app and 165 of them resolved.

The bench adjourned the hearing till April 14 after the lawyer for petitioner sought time to go through the reply.

A section officer of the ministry of inter-provincial coordination, one of the respondents in the petition, also requested for time to submit comments.

Petitioner Naeem Sadiq submitted in his petition that despite the lapse of around a year after the enactment of the law, the federal government had failed to enforce the act as ZARRA had not been set up so far to deal with the child kidnapping and criminal assault cases while its rules had also not been framed as yet.

The abduction, rape and murder of nine-year-old Zainab by a serial killer in Kasur in 2018 led to the enactment of the Zainab Alert Response and Recovery Act, 2020.

The petitioner argued that after the murder of Zainab, the federal and provincial governments had agreed upon setting up a unified emergency response helpline number to report kidnapping or disappearance of children, but the absence of efforts on part of the respondents had enabled child abusers to continue the crimes.

Published in Dawn, March 24th, 2021