Jharkhand has found a helping hand in the form of railways to contain the menace of child trafficking, one of the biggest problems facing the State.
The railways would put in place a standard operating procedure (SOP), raise help desks and put its men in uniform on alert to check the illegal transportation of minors for various purposes, including flesh and organ trade to the cities like Delhi, Kolkata and other parts of the country. The decision has been taken by the Railway Board that has been circulated to the divisions prone to child trafficking. On January 16, all the three rail divisions of Jharkhand — Dhanbad, Ranchi and Chakradharpur —have been updated about this and have been directed to take the necessary steps so that the largest transporter of the country could not be used for adversities against children.
“We have received instruction from the Board. We are in the process of nominating names for the protection units and also select stations where special mechanism would be in place to check the illegal migration. In my division, we have identified Tata in Jharkhand and either Rourkela or Jharsugada in Odisha,” said Additional Divisional Rail Manager of Chakradharpur Navin Talwar.
Child trafficking is extremely rampant in most parts of the State. A UN report published in 2013 on human trafficking suggests that most of the 24 districts of Jharkhand are stuck in the vicious circle. The report has identified districts such as Garhwa, Sahibganj, Dumka, Pakur, West Singhbhum, Ranchi, Palamau, Hazaribag, Dhanbad, Bokaro, Giridih, Koderma and lohardaga from where minor children out of abject poverty fall prey to the trafficking rackets quite frequently.
Outlining the role of railways in putting a break on the practice State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR) member Sanjay Mishra said that most of the trafficked children were taken out using this means of transportation. “Keeping a tight vigil at railway stations of the vulnerable areas can certainly do things for us. The NCPCR had in 2011 written to the Board regarding this and after the Supreme Court’s intervention now the order has been issued. We had a meeting with DRMs and deliberated upon ideas like operating child help desk at all such stations, making GRP and RPF more child-friendly, maintaining missing child diary and even instruct the forces to take such children at their homes if found in distress condition,” said Mishra.
In the first phase the exercise would identify some focal stations from where greater number of children got trafficked. later on the coverage would be spread to the entire State. Nevertheless, the railways have such guidelines but this time there would be specific mechanism and machinery in place to deal with the issue. “Usually RPF do this job but there has not been SOP in such cases. We would have now a set guidelines about what to do if a child is found and mechanism and machinery in place so that there is no confusion. Role of NGOs would also be defined,” said R Yadav, ADRM of Ranchi.
Ranchi DRM Deepak Kashyap also confirmed about the correspondence and added that the railway was looking into its details. Thereafter all the necessary modalities would be in place in this regard.