LAHORE, Dec 27: The Juvenile Justice System Ordinance, 2002, is being grossly violated in the Punjab where the government has failed to meet the mandatory requirement of establishing independent courts for the trial of juvenile criminals and the jail authorities have started withholding information about the juvenile offenders, obstructing the administration of justice.

Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Secretary General Hina Jilani disclosed this while releasing the Evaluation Report on ‘Administration of Juvenile Justice’, compiled by the AGHS Child Rights Cell, at a press conference here on Friday.

She said the courts had failed to comply with an LHC Chief Justice order to dispose of cases against juvenile offenders in four months.

She said that 63 per cent children in the Punjab jails had been under trial for more than three months. The mandatory provision of providing state lawyers to resourceless juvenile offenders was also not being met by the courts.

The provision of trial of adults and juvenile offenders involved in the same cases separately was also not being implemented.

Hina said that the mandatory provisions of nominating probation officers for every court authorized to try the juvenile offenders, informing the officer and the parents or relatives of the children after arrest and lodging them in borstal institutions were not being met either. Around 87 per cent of juvenile offenders were being kept in jails because only two borstal institutions existed at Bahawalpur and Faisalabad in the Punjab. “This results in isolation of the children from their families.”

She said that the provisions in respect of enlargement of juvenile offenders on bail were good but alternatives to imprisonment were not being adopted.