Over 30 child care institutions in Delhi unregistered: NCPCR

New Delhi: A recent investigation by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has found that 30 child care institutions (CCI) in the national Capital are functioning unregistered.

The NCPCR data, accessed by Millennium Post, shows that 64 CCIs in the city were found to be registered, while 30 were not, and the child rights body will write to the Chief Secretary of Delhi government about these.

"Over 16,000 children were found living in CCIs, of whom over 2,000 are natives of different states," the sources said, adding that the children in CCIs are sometimes reunited with their parents.

According to an NCPCR official, it is mandatory for every CCI to get registered with the concerned department of each state government.

"Unregistered CCIs can violate the rights of children and lead to human trafficking or any kind of abuse, as the kids living there have no identity and are not in the records of any concerned government agencies," said the official.

The official added that it is also possible that a person managing a CCI does not know how to get registered with the concerned agencies.

According to NCPCR, there are more than 1,300 unregistered and over 6,000 registered CCIs all over the country. Surprisingly, of these unregistered CCIs, more than 1,000 are situated in Kerala alone.

The NCPCR data further shows that a total of more than two lakh children live in all these CCIs, in which more than 6,000 children are from different states.

Yashwant Jain, member, NCPCR told Millennium Post that they have been monitoring the situation of the children in the country and are making sure that all CCIs are registered.

"Our main aim is to make sure that every child should get their rights," said Jain.

NCPCR has trained more than 50 staff, including superintendents of CCI, in Delhi in understanding the mental health of children.

The guidelines formulated by the child rights body stated that the problems of a child should be explored and underlying causes of the problem should be looked into.

The CCI staff should explore positive qualities and strengths of the children.

"A routine assessment of risk should be part of the assessment of children, and particularly adolescents, who are placed in CCIs," read the guidelines.