New Delhi: Out of every 10 children going missing in the national Capital, six remain untraced, a report released by the Alliance for People's Rights (APR) and NGO Child Rights and You (CRY) stated on Tuesday.
The report revealed that the number of missing children in the age group of 12-18 years is the highest; girl children are more in number than the boys among the missing children in this age group, and the reasons range from child labour, commercial sex work, forced marriage, domestic work, forced begging and so on.
According to NGO Cry going by the data, an average of 18 children went missing in Delhi every day in 2017, amounting to a total of 6,450 children (3,915 girls and 2,535 boys) going missing the same year, leading the state capital to retain the top spot among cities infamous for the sheer number of children going missing year after year.
Other aspects that have been highlighted in the report are the gender-wise segregation of the children who went missing, and the age-group-wise vulnerability of children as victims of trafficking.
"While the role of the police is paramount with regard to the issue of missing children, the Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) suggests community-level preventive mechanisms to tackle the issue," said Soha Moitra, the Regional Director (North), CRY.
Joy Tirkey, District Commissioner of Police, Crime Branch said that the improvement in the participation of civil society is a good sign. "We've to work more in tandem with Anti Human Trafficking Units (AHTU) as well as the communities and NGOs," he said.
He also added that a facial recognition system which is on the cusp of being launched will prove to be a lot more helpful in tracing the children who go missing.
"By forming a strong security net around children, their safety can be ascertained to a large extent, which is evident from the fact that there have been close to no incident of a child gone missing over the past two years within the communities that have engaged with the idea of forming vigilance groups; In a couple of instances where a child was found to be missing, the vigilance groups were able to take immediate action to notify the authorities which ensured early recovery of the child," Reena Banerjee, state convenor of APR, said.