Chennai: Kids in distress given tokens to be heard

CHENNAI: A token system introduced by the Child Welfare Committee’s city wing to streamline redressal of disputes has worsened things for the minor victims. The panel, which hears problems such as sexual harassment, abuse or neglect, has issued tokens to more than 100 kids as young as four years, has developed the new system to “avoid overcrowding and confusion” on their campus in Kelly’s observation home for children.
While the token rule sounded reasonable initially, the long waiting hours have caused a lot of discomfort amongst people. Children are made to wait in government or temporary homes for up to 24 hours before their appointment. “Using tokens doesn’t mean the children walk directly into counselling rooms. They still wait for up to six hours outside the office in the sun,” said an official from Childline, requesting anonymity.
The five-member city committee, which is mandated to sit every day for at least five hours, according to the The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, meets only for a couple of hours, sometimes just twice or thrice a week. And even then, only one or two members are present for the hearing, said the official. “All officials posted to the committee have other full time commitments. They take permission from work to spend a few hours here. Therefore, they don’t do the mandatory five hours hearing every day.”
The ‘commitment’ of the new CWC had whipped up controversy eight months ago when it was newly formed, since most members were either sitting board members of other children’s homes or held full-time positions in other professions. Child rights experts had advised authorities against their selection saying that CWC requires full-time commitment.
P Manorama, former CWC chairperson and director of Community Health and Education Society (CHES) said it was important for the members to coordinate and ensure timely hearing of all cases. “A few years ago, we had an issue where there was a vast difference in the number of cases rescued by Childline and those brought before us for hearing. Later we tightened our procedure and put in extra hours to ensure that all cases were heard,” she said.
“Due to this new procedure cases requiring urgent attention will end up waiting and those coming from far will have to bear extra expenditure on food and shelter. If such is the situation in Chennai, we wonder how it is in other districts,” said Girija Kumar Babu, general secretary of Indian Council for Child Welfare.
Members from the CWC, however, maintained they were not delaying cases and had implemented the rule to avoid confusion. The chairperson of the committee S Tamilselvi, was unavailable for comment.