Rehab for rescued children still a pipe dream under Operation Muskaan

HYDERABAD: As the State gears up for the third year of Operation Muskaan, which rescues children employed as labourers, experts are questioning if the State is actually doing enough to rehabilitate the rescued children, especially those coming in from other States.

Last year over 5,000 children were rescued in January during the rescue mission spearheaded by the State police. However, majority of them are sent back to their parents after they give an undertaking. There is no official data with any of the departments involved as to how many of them returned to the labour market. However, officials say that at least 5 to 10 per cent of them are repeatedly rescued from Telangana alone.

Experts say this makes the yearly exercise pointless with no conclusive means as no long term rehabilitation is offered to the rescued children.

As per protocol, once a child is rescued from the work site, they are sent to transit homes and produced in front of the Child Welfare Committe (CWC), a part of Women and Child Welfare Department, who then decides whether the children must be kept in a home or sent back to their parents. “The rescued children are kept in the two government-run shelter homes along with the juveniles in conflict with law. Those are temporary shelters and basically step in and step out homes where no kind of psychological or medical assessment is offered to the rescued children,” added Achyuta Rao, activist with Balala Hakkula Sangham.By practice, children from other States are sent back to their parents after counselling them, however there exists no means to know if they are partaking in the labour elsewhere.

“There is a chance that 5 to 10 per cent of the children are repeatedly saved under operation Muskaan, from a different worksite and from a different district,” noted Dr Gangadhar E, Joint Labour Commissioner for Telangana.

Experts then question what assurance remains that these children won’t rejoin the workforce. “The government must have a plan before rescue. Are they ensuring that they will provide the child and his family a suitable and stable alternative apart from the labour market,” adds Achyuta Rao.

Meanwhile, renewed efforts are being made by the State Resource Centre, run by the labour department who are proposing to have a Child labour tracking system, which like a database will have all info on children rescued, so that repeat offenders can be caught and dealt with strictly.

“Many children we meet during rescue operations tell us that once they are released from here they will go to another State for labour. They have accepted that they are going to be in labour force since childhood and that is the gap that government needs to bridge,” said an official from SRC.

‘Take Operation Smile campaign seriously’

Nirmal: District collector M Prashanti asked the Education Department officials to take ‘Operation Smile’, a campaign to rescue/rehabilitate missing children, seriously and ensure that all children attend school.  The Collector on Wednesday held a meeting with the officials and asked them to take up campaign