Stakeholders' meeting held to discuss child protection issues in Dibrugarh

Dibrugarh: A district-level stakeholders meeting, organized by SEWA in a joint collaboration with District Legal Services Authority, was held at the DRDA conference hall here where stakeholders were called to discuss about protection of children and its mechanism in the tea gardens. Various stakeholders like ABITA, BCP, Education Department, Labour Department and Health department participated in the meeting.

Additional Deputy Commissioner Nandita Baruah in her inaugural address spoke on the need of coordination with all stakeholders and to work collaboratively so that children's issues could be addressed without any delay. She said that during the lockdown, many cases of child rights violations reported within the district and accordingly, the district administration along with the support of NGOs and Social Welfare Department, successfully intervened in all the cases and necessary relief measures were provided to the victims by the district administration. She emphasized conducting more sensitization and awareness programmes in tea estates. She also raised concern over raising number of child-related crimes in the district and a good number of the victims were from tea plantations.

District Legal Service Authority RaniBoro, in her deliberation, dwelt at length on the various laws - Child Labour (Prohibition And Regulation) Act, Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, Prohibition of Child Marriage Act and other child rights legislation like Disability Inclusion and POCSO related to Child Protection and emphasis was given on laws related to educational rights and POSCO Act. She also analyses the conviction rate under various laws laid for the protection of children.

DebadritaSengupta, Manager, Advocacy (East), Save the Children, shared on the key findings of Rapid Need Assessment during the COVID pandemic where she highlighted the challenges faced by children in Assam. The overall impact of the pandemic revealed two major changes that this pandemic has made at the community at large which are loss of income/job or livelihood (36%) and discontinuation of children's education (33%).

Inspector of Schools, DipikaChoudhary spoke on the inclusion of differently-abled children. She said that the education department had especially trained two teachers on disability and more teachers were to be trained in the coming days. The Education Department has been working to create more awareness in the community. Arpan Borah, representing the Child Welfare Committee, addressed the gathering on gaps and challenges while dealing with child rights violations.

KritanjaliKachayap, Coordinator- Programme from Save the Children, emphasized on District Needs Assessment Plan on child protection issues with a special focus on vulnerable pockets of the district so that special attention could be given to the vulnerable children and their families. Participants viewed the early formation of VLCPCs (Village Level Child Protection Committee) and BLCPC (Block Level Child Protection Committee) in each village and in all the tea estates of Dibrugarh district as per the government guidelines that will help to address the children related issues more effectively in the local level. Earlier, speaking on the objective of the consultation, Arfan Hussain, Director of SEWA, stressed the need of all stakeholders of the district to work together to contribute for effective implementation of child protection goals laid out in the National Plan of Action for children. John Paul Tirky of SEWA hosted the meeting.

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