A comprehensive survey has been started for gathering and compiling complete data of child beggars, destitutes and street children in each district, including Sialkot district of the Province.
Official sources told Business Recorder on Tuesday that many steps had already been taken for the protection of destitutes and neglected children as well as elimination of child beggary from the province.
The survey is being done under a network programme 'Child Protection Welfare Bureaus and Child Protection Institutions, which is being set up at district headquarters in the province. Child protection welfare bureaus had so far been established at Sialkot, Multan, Lahore, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, and Rahim Yar Khan districts of the Punjab.
Each bureau and child protection institution would establish a fund to be known as "Destitute and Neglected Children's Welfare fund." The concept of this programme was to provide secure and safe haven to destitute, neglected, run-away and lost children.
The child protection institutes would ensure the provision of residential, educational, recreational and vocational training facilities to the admitted destitute and neglected children.
Furthermore, the sources revealed that the establishment of 'Child Protection Courts' is also on the cards and these courts would not only work as a guardian of the rights of the destitute and neglected children, but also as a mechanism to punish the persons and groups involved in offences against child right. The child protection welfare bureaus would initially focus on the beggar and street children because of magnitude of the problem in Punjab sources added.