PESHAWAR, Nov 20: Dost Welfare Foundation, a local NGO, in collaboration with the jail authorities observed the International Children's Day with child prisoners in Central Jail Peshawar on Saturday.

The NGO's project coordinator, Ibrahim Yar Muhammad, highlighted the problems of legal assistance, delayed justice, unavailability of borstal homes, unscientific age determination by the police, overcrowded prisons and poor implementation of the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000.

The project coordinator appealed to the Inspector General Police to issue directions to all the police stations to take appropriate measures while determining the age of a child.

Due to the wild guesses of the police, most juveniles are labelled adults while in reality their ages happen to be below 18, he said.

He called upon the provincial government to take immediate steps to release children imprisoned under what he called the inhuman law of FCR (Frontier Crimes Regulation).

According to official statistics, 49 children have been convicted under the FCR, which also includes 15 children whose ages were below 10 years. He pointed out that the unofficial statistics of children under FCR were 75 plus.

Regarding the legal aid, the NGO's project coordinator said that panels of lawyers under the JJSO had been constituted in some of the districts including Peshawar but still no remarkable change had been witnessed in the provision of free legal assistance to child offenders.

Talking about the establishment of Borstal homes for the reformation and rehabilitation of children in conflict with the law, he criticized the snail-paced progress in the construction of borstal homes in Peshawar and Bannu.

The plan to turn adolescent training centre at Haripur Central Jail into a borstal home was still on paper. The borstal homes will greatly reduce the problem of overcrowding in prisons, he said.