CM urged to take up action
IMPHAL, Jul 23: Taking serious note of the recent unabated reports of child kidnapping for making them child soldiers as well as for the purpose of child trafficking which has gained alarming proportion in the State, the Core Committee members representing all the District Juvenile Justice Boards and Child Welfare Committees operating in the State have jointly submitted a memorandum to the Chief Minister with suggestions for preventive and reconstructive steps.
To ensure checking and prevention of this undesirable trend, the memoran- dum enumerated four suggestions. The first sugges- tion is initiation of prompt intervention and adequate action for preventing the recent spate of child abduc- tion cases in the State. The second is appointment of First Class principal Magistrate in all the districts un- der the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Act, 2006. The third is establishment of special Juvenile Police Units in all the districts of the State and lastly, the fourth point suggested to make functional all the Observation Homes for adequately providing care and protection of juveniles in conflict with law.
The memorandum point-ed out that the statistics of child abductions are increa-sing day after day. Even in the newspaper edition of today, i.e. July 23, there are various reports of attem-pted abductions besides the startling report where four female children of the State who were bound for Bangkok for trafficking were rescued from the clutches of their traffickers at Dimapur due to the timely intervention of the officials concerned.
As responsible citizens rendering services in the field of the rights and welfare of the children, the Core committee members observed that the current trend of child abductions is a cause of great concern.
In the memorandum signed by convenor of Core Committee N Jeevanmala, on behalf of all other members further pointed out that due to lack of proper implementation and non-utilisation of the provisions of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 and its Amendment Act, 2006, the func- tioning of the various JJBs and CWCs established in all the districts in the State have been severely hampered. Moreover, non-esta- blishment of Special Juve-nile Police Units in all dist- ricts and Observation Ho-mes is a great impediment.