FIRST ACTIVITIES 

STREET CHILDREN MELA, VIJAYAWADA CITY

(November 20, 1997)

The International Child Rights Day – November 20 --was fittingly celebrated by the Forum by organising a city level Street Children Mela.  After the official inauguration, the mela gave the Forum members an real opportunity to demonstrate the fruits arising out of networking for the sake of the deprived and disadvantaged children.  The mela gave a thousand and odd street children an occasion to come together and to have their own identity.  As part of Forum’s strategies of children participation and child to child approach, many inmates, the former street children but now under rehabilitation process under city’s various organisations, participated in organising the mela along with other children from different city schools.  The mela was inaugurated by Mr. Bansal, the Divisional Railway Manager in the presence of Dr. Bhargava, the UNICEF’s representative from Hyderabad and Mr. T. Venkateswara Rao, Mayor and President of the Forum.  The day was full of cultural and sports competitions for street children.  The closing ceremony was presided by Dr. D.T. Naik, the police commissioner and ended with cultural entertainments from different schools and organisations and prize distribution.

REPUBLIC DAY CELEBRATIONS -1998

The Forum has been successful in creating an awareness among the citizens of the problems of street children, and the attempt has proved fruitful.  To create a positive attitude among the medical personnel towards the children at risk, the Forum organised Republic Day celebrations in University General Hospital premises in collaboration with Dr. C.V. Ramana Rao M.S., the then Superintendent of the Hospital.

IT'S NOW A CHILDREN'S WARD !

One of the main results of the conscientization process and collaboration initiated by the Forum was the renovation of Children’s Ward at University General Hospital in the city with the help of individuals and NGOs committed to the cause of these deprived and displaced children.  On May 26, 1998, the renovated ward was inaugurated by Smt. Padala Aruna, the then honourable Minister for Women Development  and Child Welfare, Government of A.P.

After two years, the Forum has at present taken up the task of renovating it further to facilitate better care for city's disadvantaged children.  The Forum hopes to complete the work by end of next month.

THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON REHABILITATION OF STREET CHILDREN

A ten member House Committee of the Andhra Pradesh legislature, headed by Mr. G. Sayanna MLA was constituted on 15th July, 1998, thanks to the intervention made by one of the members, Mr. K. Subba Raju, the then MLA of Vijayawada West in the Assembly on the plight of the street children in the main cities of the state.  The House Committee, accompanied by Mr. T. Venkateswara Rao, Mayor and President of the Forum, visited two member organisations of the Forum--SKCV Children's Trust & Navajeevan Bala Bhavan--on October 13, 1998.  The very afternoon, in a Press Meet, the Forum, on behalf of the member organisations, put forward following suggestions to the House Committee:

That the State Government recognize the homes run by our NGOs on par with Social Welfare Hostels; does the needful to obtain provisions and clothing for these children at a subsidized rate from the outlets of the Civil Supplies Department and other governmental departments; establishes in the city a Street Children School where they are given basic education and skills training.; allots land in the city and gives financial support for NGOs to open shelters for the street children, especially for girl street children; sets up a Redressal Cell constituting of the representatives of NGOs, Municipal Corporation, Police and Labour Department; adds the problem of street children in the curriculum of the training of the police personnel; sets up a Special Police Station for children in each city with police personnel trained to attend to their needs, does the needful to establish at the earliest “CHILDLINE” facility (free telephone call, through the common number 1098, to the helping centers when the child is in grave need) in all the main cities of the State and to produce documentaries on street children and get them telecast on Doordarshan and other media units and to conduct sensitization programmes on street children for Police, Labour and Health departments, Corporation staff and the staff belonging to Government Observation Homes.

Thanks to these efforts and recommendations of the House Committee thereof, the city organizations taking care of Street Children receives, since August 1999, the needed quantity of rice at a subsidized rate @Rs. 4 per kg.

A BUDGET HEAD FOR STREET CHILDREN REHABILITATION

Thanks to the efforts of Mr. T. Venkateswara Rao, Mayor and President of the Forum, for the first time in the history of Vijayawada Municipal Corporation, an account head was added in its annual budget with an mount of Rs. 2 lakhs for the rehabilitation of street children. 

As a result, apart from other welfare measures, two pairs of clothes had been distributed by the Municipal Corporation, on 18 March, 1999 as Ugadi gift, to more than 400 street children inmates of various member organizations of the Forum.  This year too, the arrangements are being made for the same by the Municipal Corporation in collaboration with the Forum.

ANNUAL GENERAL BODY MEETING - NOVEMBER 3, 1999

In the Annual General Body meeting of the Forum, held at Santosh Bhavan, SKCV Children's Trust, all the old executive committee members were re-elected to the Governing Body members, except that there was an inter change of portfolios between Dr. S. Manihara and Fr. Thomas Koshy, respectively as Vice-President and Secretary.  Also, in the meeting, the preparation was on to organise the first State level Street Children's Convention in the city.

STATE LEVEL STREET CHILDREN'S CONVENTION

A State level street children's convention was organised by the Forum last year from December 10 - 11, 1999.  His Excellency Dr. C. Rangarajan, Governor, inaugurated the convention.  Cultural competitions for the city school's children, sports and games and cultural nights for more than 1500 street children from all over the state were organised during the three days of the convention.  Moreover, a two day workshop on the problems faced by street children, with 150 participants (street children, city elders and officials of various departments), was also conducted.

THE NEW PRESIDENT TAKES OVER

After the election of the new Mayor and deputy Mayor, the Forum organized a special function at Thummalapalivari Kalakshetra on May 18, 2000 to handover officially the reins to the newly elected Mayor, Smt. P. Anuradha, as the new Ex-Officio President of the Forum, and Sri. Ch. Krishna Kumar, the new Deputy Mayor as the new Vice-President.  The function was also to thank the outgoing President and the Founder of the Forum, Sri. T. Venkateswara Rao.

MAKING POLICE PERSONNEL CHILD-FRIENDLY

With the arrival of Sri Sudheep Lakhtakia, as Commissioner of Police, the Forum has taken a new turn.  The Police are coming forward, to play a vital role in making Vijayawada “child friendly.”  As an initial step in this line, street children were invited to participate in the Republic Day Parade this year, when some of the children also put up a ballet depicting their plight.  Street children from various organisations also participated in the Independence Day celebrations of this year, held at Police Parade Ground.

A two day training programme, September 9 - 10, for police officers on child rights was organized by the Commissioner in collaboration with the Forum.  This is to be followed up by further training programmes for all the police personnel in the city in the coming two years.

ADVOCATING CHILD RIGHTS

The Forum not only spoke on Child Rights but, on many occasions it had actively involved in its advocacy too.  Since its inception, the Forum took special initiatives, under the leadership of Mayor and President of the Forum, to re-dress the injustice dome to the deprived children in the city whenever the cases of abuses and exploitation had been brought to its notice, either by its own members organisations and other individual members.

The children are exploited at the hands of employers who run restaurants, workshops  and  other commercial activities in and around Vijayawada city.  They  are  lured  by the  brokers  to  the hazardous jobs by making false promises of higher wages.  In reality, they have to work 14 to 16 hours a day; sometimes, many of them are not paid at all, and in many a case, they are severely beaten up just because they dared to ask for their promised wage.  In certain restaurants, they are beaten thoroughly and locked up.  Moreover, most of these places of work are so unhygienic that they  fall a prey to various skin diseases.

The following cases are only two typical ones among many number of cases undertaken by the Forum.

In the month of October 1998, Forum had to take up the case of the following children who worked in Vijaya Durga Hotel at Autonager.  Siva and Prasad, both below 12 years, were taken from Eluru Lock, near Railway Station, by the broker, Mr. Sreenu, of the said hotel owner, on different dates, with the promise of paying Rs. 900/- to each one of them.  Siva worked in the said hotel for 10 days and Prasad for two weeks.  When the boys asked for their wage, both of them were severely beaten by the supervisors.  The said supervisors also locked up Prasad in one of the rooms for more than one hour.  When Navajeevan street presence Co-ordinator, Mr. T. Nagaraj, reached the said Hotel with Siva and Prasad to plead their case, the said supervisors threatened the boys again.  In response to the  social workers' complaint on behalf of these children, Mr. T. Venkateswara Rao, the mayor and President of the Forum      referred the case to the labour department for immediate action.  Labour officer Sri. Viswanatham took up the investigation and suitable compensation was meted out to the boys.

More recently, in the month of October 1999, four young boys were detained, abused and tortured by a hotlier at G. Kondur in Mylavaram mandal of Krishna district.  Their only crime was demanding their rightful wages.  Their plight came to light when boys fled and reached the city and approached the social workers in a rehabilitation centre for street children.  The children--K. Ramesh (12), K. Raju (12), Sekhar (13) and M. Suribabu (12) were recruited as dish-washers in a hotel on a daily wage of Rs. 30 plus food.  They were forced to work for more than 12 hours at stretch.  Three lads toiled for over a week and Suribabu had worked for 45 days.

Although the hotlier, Mr. Venkateswara Rao had agreed to pay their wages at the end of the day every day, he skipped paying them on some pretext.  Finally when the boys demanded their wages, the hotlier and his supervisor, Suresh, confined them to a room and thrashed them with a thick wire.  Suribabu was also branded with a hot iron bar.  When the boys escaped their torment and reached one the city's street children shelters, the social workers referred the case to the Forum.  The Mayor and President of the Forum took up the matter with the Commissioner of Police and other concerned officials.  Acting on the complaint, Mylavaram inspector, Mr. S. Prasad Rao, arrested the owners of the two hotels and booked the case against them.