NCPCR identifies over 30 locations prone to child begging in city

New Delhi: More than 30 areas in the national Capital have been identified by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) where minors were found to be involved in begging or manual labour.

The child rights body also claimed that it has found over 500 children involved in begging and manual labour.

A meeting was organised by NCPCR on Thursday, wherein it told stakeholders to conduct meetings of district task forces and take up the issue of child begging.

During a survey conducted by the Commission, around 35 to 40 places were spotted in Delhi – including areas near Metro stations and bus stops – where children were found begging and doing labor work.

Some of these areas included Dwarka red light, Palam flyover, Khajuri Khas redlight, Tilak Nagar, areas near Uttam Nagar East and Shastri Park Metro stations, Connaught Place, Moolchand flyover and India Gate.

"We found over 500 children involved in begging and labour activity," said an official from the child rights body.

It is often seen that children involved in begging on the streets have serious wounds and/or are even maimed on purpose, which will draw more attention of passersby or drivers and compel them to give these children food and/or money.

Investigation by the child rights body also found that in most cases, families themselves force their children into begging.

In addition to being forced by families, some children who are reported missing also have no choice but to resort to begging, in order to get a square meal.

The Commission also suspects that some organised gangs might be behind the illegal activity. Many families are from neighboring states.

During Thursday's meeting, NCPCR met with various stakeholders, including government and police officials, NGOs etc, wherein it clearly stated that child begging should be a prominent issue in district task force meetings (DTM) held on child labour.

"We have asked authorities involved in the meeting to provide us minutes of the meetings, so that we can find out whether child begging was taken as an issue or not," said an NCPCR official.

NCPCR member Yashwant Jain told Millennium Post that there should be a proper standard operating procedure (SOP) to deal with the menace of begging.

"State governments should work for the safety of their children and a proper policy should be made in this regard," said Jain.

He added that in the meeting, they also said that stakeholders to help each other and proper coordination is required to fight the menace.