Centre for Development and Peace Studies organizes media orientation programme on child protection

KOKRAJHAR: Centre for Development and Peace Studies (CDPS), an NGO based in Guwahati organized a two-day media orientation workshop on child protection with special theme, “Role of media in creating protective environment for BTR’s children at Bodoland Guest House, Kokrajhar from Tuesday. Media persons of BTC districts participated in the two-day workshop.

In his opening remarks, the Executive Director of the CDPS Wasbir Hussain showed the cases of children of BTC region like kidnapping, trafficking, school dropout, child marriage, sexual abuse, nutrition and other related issues. He showed the data of school dropout, abduction, child marriage etc. Baksa district of BTC has the highest school dropout and child marriage cases besides there are alarming cases of sexual abuse and trafficking in other districts of the council. He said the media could play a positive role in driving a positive change in the region. He also called upon media persons and media houses to give attention and space on the issues of violation of protection of children.

In his inaugural speech, the Chief Executive Member (CEM) of BTC Pramod Boro said they took initiative for child protection when he was an activist of the student union and dealt with the issues of trafficking, child marriage and free and compulsory education to children. He said they received poor response from police administration in those days and response from the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) was also not adequate.

“Now, after becoming the head of the council, I am now part of the system to execute the acts related to child protection,” he said adding that the council could not give much time on the issues of children as they were focussing on other activities in the last two years. He said the government of BTC had started various programmes in collaboration with Azim Premzi University especially on skill development. He also said in BTR there was no monitoring mechanism to check the issues of protection of child rights. There was no proper data to analyse the school dropout students, correct figures of trafficking and other issues but the council government has engaged BTR fellows in most of the departments through whom they are collecting the data to find out mechanisms to address the issues of children and other problems.

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