E-Paper
City lacks shelter home for mentally retarded girls
Boasting to become a hi-tech city soon, Allahabad is still short of a place where mentally retarded, orphan and destitute girls could be sheltered.
Boasting to become a hi-tech city soon, Allahabad is still short of a place where mentally retarded, orphan and destitute girls could be sheltered.
Childline, which is active in the field of issues related to children, has to deal with this sensitive matter much often. On June 14, the organisation was handed over a 13-year-old mentally retarded girl at 1.30 am who was unable to relate her whereabouts.
The volunteers tried their level best to trace her exact address but they failed.
With no expert hand to deal with such cases, the girl had to be presented before Child Welfare Committee (CWC) meeting. However the CWC members could not take any decision as they too were helpless in the matter.
Consequently the girl had to be kept at the Childline office for many days.
"We are finally shifting the girl to Agra on our own resources as there is a separate shelter in Agra for such type of females.
But we must need to do something concrete regarding the issue as the city lacks any such facility where special children could be kept, especially females.
A couple of active organisations are ready to keep them with the condition that the children are not be orphan and destitute," said Shagufta Naqvi, coordinator Childline.
"I have also dealt with two other cases of mentally unsound boys.
They too had to be kept at the Childline office for more than 10 days. However, we are just an agency dealing with such cases and our work is to settle such cases as soon as possible.
But we find ourselves helpless in dealing with mentally retarded female children as there is no place as such in the city where they could be lodged," added Shagufta.
"Lucknow has the facility to keep special children but I think we need to have it in Allahabad too. We need to hold meeting with the District Magistrate in order to acquaint him with our problem. We should not be held responsible if anything goes wrong while dealing with such cases," she added.
Similar opinion was expressed by Indira Swaroop, CWC president, who said that male children are given preference to some extent but the city lacks any facility for females. "We are helpless. All we do is to send such children to Lucknow. We are in urgent need of a permanent shelter home for mentally retarded, destitute and orphan girls in the city," she added.
