ABDUL RASHEED AZAD

ISLAMABAD: While expressing serious concern over the increasing incidents of child abuse, a parliamentary panel has directed the authorities concerned to develop a structural system for countering child abuse and multiple factors connected to it.

The Senate special committee on the issue of increasing incidents of child abuse met here with Senator Nuzhat Sadiq in the chair on Tuesday. The committee expressed dismay over lack of a centralised system for welfare of vulnerable children, data compilation and concrete steps for their safe future.

Nuzhat Sadiq said that child abuse is a major issue but there is too much overlapping of functions of different departments in this regard.

Senator Raza Rabbani said, “First of all, develop a proper centralised system and then focus on the data compilation, besides establishing a coordination system among the different departments working within the province, and between the provinces and federal departments.”

The panel recommended that all agencies should work collectively to save time and that a subcommittee be formed to sort out overlapping of efforts. It was also recommended that it must be determined whether or not departments working under the provinces are coordinating with one another. The subcommittee must work out the ways in which inter-linking of departments is encouraged. A structure must be formed to address the issues efficiently and check whether or not the mechanism works.

While briefing the panel about the issue of registration of children with unknown parentage, the officials of National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) said that the system selected the names randomly, adding that those children were added to the family tree of the selected persons. He said that this was done without informing the family.