Human trafficking is not an alien issue for Jharkhand, though for the first time State officials confessed that the nefarious designs of few to exploit vulnerable sections of the society is aided to some extent by gaps in the delivery system of social sector schemes and failure to keep an eye on the system that was supposed to keep track of exodus from the area. A number of steps are in the offing in the wake of the realization.
The realization of miserable state of affairs came to the fore when a fact-finding team of Secretary Welfare department Rajeev Arun Ekka and Secretary labour, Employment & Training, Rahul Sharma visited Bangru Panchayat in Palkot block of Gumla. The visit was prompted by a report that claimed that hundreds of children went missing from the Panchayat. “The visit was also an opportunity to contemplate (about reasons of trafficking) besides to find out ground reality about missing children in the Panchayat,” said Ekka.
Surprisingly, the State even lacks exact figure of people missing either due to trafficking or any other reason and according to data available with the department of labour just 7044 people migrating from all over Jharkhand are registered with the department.
Stung by the issue of missing children especially in the wake of trafficking of 160 children of Jharkhand State is considering survey of missing or migrating children under Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) in each block of Jharkhand. Other measures to address the curse of trafficking are setting up Village Children Protection Committee expeditiously to maintain list of people migrating, issuing Identity Card generated by labour department to migrating people to help them in contacting to the helpline of a concerned village, setting up resource centre at Delhi to provide an interface outside the State, executing projects promoting self-employment in collaboration with department of Rural Development, Agriculture and lobour, Employment & Training besides awareness campaign to educate people.
“A comprehensive awareness campaign will be started from this year. We will tell people that there may be people in villages too who are involved in trafficking so that they can identify such people,” added Ekka.