United Nations Children Education Fund (Unicef) will extend technical and operational co-operation to Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for implementing the newly enacted "child protection and welfare act" in letter and spirit.
Efforts will also be made to incorporate the provincial government's agenda for child protection into forthcoming three-year programme, to be launched by Swiss Development Corporation for uplift of various sectors of KP province including that of social welfare.
Islamabad Unicef Head, S. Mirinda stated this during a meeting at the conference room of Social Welfare Directorate, Peshawar on Tuesday with Provincial Minister for Social Welfare and Women Development, Sitara Ayaz in the chair.
Appreciating provincial government's commitment and seriousness towards child protection and social welfare, Unicef chief described the legislation made for protecting vulnerable child a great revolution and suggested framing of a three partite strategy between the provincial government, NGOs and Unicef to ensure implementation of the laws in a smooth and effective manner. She, however, said that Unicef would be able to extend its support in only two areas this year, namely capacity building of officials and service operations, adding that co-operation will provided in more areas next year.
Briefing Unicef officials about the provincial government's concerns and measures with regard to child protection, particularly in the backdrop of prevailing militancy and crises like floods and earthquakes etc, Ms Ayaz stressed the need to chalk out plan that could check overlapping on duplicity of child protection activities and ensure strong and foolproof co-ordination among the stakeholders.
She also stressed need to address minor issues regarding child abuse with effective action plans, adding provincial government would prefer to avail technical support from the willing donors instead of monitory resources to make a practical breakthrough in addressing the child abuses.
She further said that after devolution of certain sectors from the centre to the provinces under 18th amendment, Social Welfare Department of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is going to take over more institutes of special children in addition to many other responsibilities that would broaden role and functions of this department.
Therefore, she said, help and support of the non-government organisations and that of international organisations like Unicef will be required and appreciated by the provincial government. Head of Child Protection Office of the Federal Ombudsman and former Chief Secretary of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Islamabad, Ejaz Ahmad Qureshi on the occasion explained mechanism of co-ordination and working relationship among various stakeholders and offered his expertise and services to support the KP government and Unicef.
Regional Head of Unicef Peshawar, Lucho Melundevi apprised the meeting of the agency's co-operation with the provincial government regarding establishment of child protection bureau and such other ventures in the province. He informed that the lapsing MoU between KP and Unicef will be soon renewed for continuation of help-lines.
Chief Protection Officer Abdul Samad, while proposing certain monitory support for the families of abused and vulnerable children to get their livelihood-earning children into educational or skill development centres, informed that the provincial government has approved establishment of child protection centres in four districts of the province.
Director Social Welfare, Imtiaz Ayub while elaborating role of Social Welfare Directorate in implementation of Bacha Khan Rozgar Scheme, described lack of resources as one of the main impediments to address child protection issues and hoped that Unicef's support to remove this hurdle would be instrumental in this regard.