Kochi: Come June, a total of six police stations in the state will turn ‘Children-friendly’ to ensure their safety.
Fort police station in Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam East, Kadavan-thra in Kochi, Thrissur Town East, Kozhikode Town and Kannur Town police stations would be turned ‘child–friendly’ on a pilot basis.
“The project is being implemented with support of the United Nation’s International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef). We will run the pilot project for a year. If found effective, the initiative will be extended to more police stations across the state,” said P. Vijayan, inspector-general of police, Kochi Range, and the nodal officer for the project. Infrastructural modifications of the select police stations have already been completed and Chief Mini-ster Pinarayi Vijayan will launch the project later in May or early June.
“The aim is to create a system where children can approach police with serious grievances committed against them. A child-friendly atmosphere will be created and efforts will be made to mend children taken into custody for crimes. DGP Loknath Behera is directly overseeing the project,” the officer said.
A child-friendly police station will have a designated police officer as a child welfare officer, a separate space for the interaction between the officer and the children and a separate register to record cases related to children and the action taken. The child welfare officer will coordinate with related agencies like Our Resp-onsibility to Children district resource centres, Child Welfare Com-mittee, Juvenile Justice Board, Child Protection Units, Probation Officer, Superintendents of Homes etc.
Unicef will train the child welfare officer and officer in charge of the police stations concerned besides monitoring and review the programme for compliance with international standards.
Meanwhile, the officials plan to avail services of nearly one lakh volunteers who completed at least two years of training under the successful Student Police Cadet programme and make them the intermediary between the student victims and the police.
A set of 21 indicators drawn primarily from the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act have been developed for the police stations to qualify as child-friendly.
