STREET CHILDREN REHABILITATION HC calls for reports on actions taken
The High Court Division on Wednesday directed the secretaries of ministries of social welfare, and women and children affairs to submit separate reports in 40 days on what steps taken to rehabilitate street children.
A bench of Justice M Enayetur Rahim and Justice Mostafizur Rahman in a ruling also asked the respondents to explain in four weeks why they would not be directed to rehabilitate street children.
The bench directed Motijheel police station’s officer-in-charge to file a case and arrest the perpetrators involved in setting on fire a 10-year-old street child at Fakirerpool on Monday.
The court passed the orders after hearing a public interest litigation writ petition filed by Supreme Court lawyer Md Moniruzzaman.
The petitioner submitting newspapers report to the court said that on Monday evening, the homeless child was set on fire by an unidentified man and he now was under treatment at the Dhaka Medical College’s burn unit with 27 per cent burn injuries.
The petitioner said that the High Court directed the government to take care and bear all treatment cost of the child, who could not provide any information about his parents and the person who set him on fire.
He submitted that he visited the child at the burn unit where there was no attendant for him.
The child was taken to the DMCH by an unidentified person, he said.
The number of street children stood at 1.5 million in 2015, and it will reach 1.56 million in 2024, according to the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) projects.
Estimates of the number of children living on the street in Dhaka vary from 250,000 to 400,000, according to a report published in the Unicef’s website in 2009.
The report said that the Rapid urbanisation in the country created pockets of dense slums and squatter settlements, each housing to thousands of street children.
It said that children living in these conditions were growing up on the margins of society, without appropriate protection, education, health care or guidance.
News Courtesy: www,newagebd.net
