THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: At a time when children in the state are becoming increasingly vulnerable to sexual abuse, the General Education Department has not shown even the least bit of inclination to implement a comprehensive 'primary to higher secondary' anti-abuse strategy. Following the directive of the State Commission for the Protection of Child Rights, the GED had issued a circular on March 18 last year to empower distressed children. It was a many-tiered strategy.
At the children’s level, complaint boxes will be kept in private corners of a school into which children can drop their written complaints; they can remain anonymous if they want to. At the teacher’s level, a protocol was evolved on how to deal with abuse complaints. Teachers were to be given training on how to leverage Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
A vetting committee - comprising teachers, parents, psychologists and a prominent public figure in the locality – had to be set up in each school to vet these complaints weekly. Further, local police stations had to set up a special cell to deal with issues related to schools in their area. “None of this was implemented. In fact, the GED issued the circular after the Commission asked for an action taken report when it was found that certain schools were not acting on the complaints of children. But now this circular has been forgotten,” said a source in the Commission for the Protection of Child Rights.
The GED’s inaction is all the more intriguing because the ‘complaint box’ strategy had worked wonders earlier. Three years ago, when Mahila Samakhya had installed such boxes in 100-odd government schools in the state, it had collected nearly 800 serious complaints in three months. “Then, the number of children who had to be rescued from their homes were so large that the state did not have enough welfare homes to hold them,” said Dr Seema Bhaskar, the former Mahila Samkhya head who had initiated the strategy.
