Abuse of children

NCPA asleep?

The National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) seems to be asleep. These officials, who are supposedly planning to improve the lot of children in Sri Lanka, cannot move their lumpy lethargic bodies when one little abuse is brought to the notice of their sleepy eyes. It looks like the best you would get out of them is throwing it to the relevant police station. And they go back to warming their seats and sleeping away the time they get paid for.

It was only a small girl of about 10 years. Begging with the mother, or rented out to a ‘nenda’, at the Ayurveda Junction, at the beginning of the Parliament road, where all the scaly-eyed politicians pass by. She’s in the hot sun of mid-day, on a Sunday, walking the narrow island that demarcates the middle of the road. People in cars stopping at the traffic lights doled out a few good rupees to her tiny hands while the ‘mother’ looked on with a grateful smile. What other good proposals come her way through these windows, we don’t know. This is a scene we see almost every day now. Anywhere you go in Sri Lanka. The familiar toddlers slept or were drugged while those who carried them were begging with them draped on their shoulders, roasting in the sun.

I reported the incident to NCPA through their hotline at 12 noon on Sunday. After listening to a long recorded message someone finally came online and took down my concern and said the CPA would inform the relevant police immediately, Welikada police at this instance.  After two hours I was passing through the same spot and I saw the kid still there in the middle of the road, in the hot sun of 2 pm in the afternoon, plying the trade of the mother/ aunt. I called the Child Protection hotline number back to see what happened to my complaint (as they called it), but they said they’ve done their bit and informed the police, if I need to know the status, I can do so by calling Welikada police! The poor child was there next Sunday too.

 We have a big office somewhere, with god knows how many employees working, at the NCPA, Having luncheon meetings after luncheon meetings on how to protect Sri Lanka’s children, doing all kinds of paper pushing, crunching numbers and god knows what. But when it comes to one small girl’s safety and wellbeing, they are deaf. There is no one to take responsibility. I must say this was not the case a few years ago. I reported a similar situation then, a young boy roped in by a known drug addict, selling picture books with him, near the same place, near MacDonald’s. The police swooped in within minutes.  The chairperson of the authority, who was a woman at that time, called me personally to thank me and give me an update. What has happened to that efficiency? That care? Can a child ever reach out to them when in trouble? Definitely not through their hotline, I can promise. What is the purpose of that Authority’s existence, if all they do is pass it onto the police? Why not have these child hotlines directly in the police stations instead of wasting time going through this useless institution? It looks as if the main function of the NCPA were to churn out statistics.

It has been reported that there is a backlog of 42073 unresolved cases of grave crimes against children. Grave crimes! Not like the petty one I reported. If this report is true, then that itself is a grave crime against children, committed by this organisation. If the attitude and apathy shown to my call by this NCPA is anything to go by, they are the bane of children, not their protectors.

The government needs to intervene here urgently to relook at this institute’s attitudes, efficiency, and purpose.

Citizen S