Lack of basic infrastructure slows down Operation Smile: CWC

Despite the Ministry of Home Affairs writing to the police chiefs of Haryana, directing them to enlist the assistance of language translators for the second phase of Operation Smile, the Child Welfare Committee of Gurgaon has not received any help till now. Basic infrastructure like an office, psychiatrists, councillors, none have been provided to them.

The letter was written in the first week of January to the Haryana Police Chief to enlist translators, who will help tracking down the background of the children rescued under the second phase of Operation Smile, however, none have been provided to the city’s Child Welfare Committee (CWC).

The MHA in its letter stated that the police must provide “proper provision and availability of food, clothes, medical aid, professional translators, psychiatrists and shelter homes must be ensured well before the rescue operation.”

According to data received from the CWC officials, under the second phase of Operation Smile 146 children, of which 63 missing and 83 child labourers, were rescued till January 23.

The background of these children reveal that majority of them belonged from Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and did not know Hindi properly. Due to the language barrier, the CWC officials took a lot of time, in some cases even months, to track the background of the children.

“These children are too young to recall their home town and are not very familiar with Hindi and we as CWC members are not familiar with their languages, the dialect is different. This makes the task of rehabilitation difficult for us,” said Shakuntala Dhull, chairperson of Gurgaon Child Welfare Committee (CWC).

In a month, the committee comes across at least 8-10 such cases of child trafficking in the city but due to the unavailability of the translators, the officials are not able to extract the entire information from the trafficked children, she added.

What is surprising is that the Gurgaon Police are completely unaware of such requirement and need of these translators. The police also denied to have received any order to provide translators to CWC from the department heads.