Misery of children in Assam

GUWAHATI: An average 175 of them dying everyday, five per cent of them working as labourers and their rights trampled without any qualm, the children are in a shocking condition in Assam where grinding poverty has also thrown street children into peddling illegal drugs.

The children here as elswhere in the country are unaware about the rights guaranteed to them under the Constitution like the Right to Survive or Right to Live in a Hygienic Condition.

Even if they become aware of their rights, they have seldom anything to do as they have already been sucked into the grindmill, UNICEF's Assam representative Jero Master said.

The Constitution defined anybody below 18 as a child and entitled them to certain child rights, Master asserted.  With the fourth highest infant mortality rate of 66 per 1000 live births in the country, Assam accounts for death of 175 children below five years of age and 132 infants  every day, he points out.
 

Over 40 per cent children below three years are underweight, 76.7 Per cent of the children are anaemic. The 2001 census also revealed that 54 Per cent children between
five years and 14 years were child labourers, the UNICEF representative quoted.

Around 53.4 Per cent of girls were also found by the 2002-04 district level household survey to be married off before they attained age 18 years.
      

Street children commonly involved in petty theft were now selling illegal drugs such as marijuana and ganja.

The state's Juvenile Justice board has records of several cases of drug peddling by street children 80 per cent of whom are engaged in petty crimes.
       

According to Father Lucas, a member of the Juvenile Board and who runs a prominent destitute home Snehalaya for street children, said poverty drove the children to resort to
illegal activities and theft to earn `easy money'.
       

With their basic needs remaining unfulfilled, the children were easy victims of temptation for food and toys and therefore resorted to petty crimes to acquire them, Father Lucas pointed out.

These children were also not taught the difference between wrong and right by their parents who sometimes even force them to go out of their homes to earn a livelihood, he
said.

There were instances of children being compelled to earn even if it involved illegal means, he said. 

The runaway children, who hung around train stations and bus stands, also fall prey to unscrupulous persons who use them for selling illegal substances, begging or
pick-pocketting, child activists said.
       

Even though these children are physically abused, the father said, they endure the illtreatment because they feel a strange sense of security being provided with food, shelter and clothes, the activists said.
       

To correct the unhappy situation, Master called for an intensive campaign to raise awareness level among  people about the violation of child rights.