Senate Body urges to protect "street Children" of the country

ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee has urged upon the Government to accord priority to the social sector of the society by improving the lot of the downtrodden, weak and vulnerable segments of society particularly women and children.

The Senate standing Committee met here on Monday in the Parliament House in the heading of Senator Mir Mohammad Naseer Mengal and stressed on a passionate plea for protecting the 1,50,000 ’street children’ all over the country as uncertainty related to their future stares them in the face.

The committee further directed the Ministry of Social Welfare to conduct a country wide survey for assessing the actual number of street children and later create arrangements for bringing them in to the Child Protections Center (CPC) for their comprehensive education and well being, so as to enable them to earn a decent living in future.

The Senate Committee further proposed to establish (CPC) in the four provinces of the country as the only one National Child Protection Center (CPC) working in Islamabad was insufficient to protect the ’street children’ of all over the country, as "these children were the future of the country and we cannot afford to neglect them".

The Committee further directed the Ministry to set up special counters in all District Headquarters Hospitals (DHQs) to facilitate the poor deserving patients with serious diseases by arranging free medicines, blood artificial limbs, clinical tests, etc and termed the present prevailing procedure of verification of data for such patients as being cumbersome and directed to simplified the system to get Zakat / Bait-ul-Mal funds swiftly.

The Senate body also took notice of the mismanagement and impropriety at the Tawana Pakistan Project (TPP) and constituted a sub committee to conduct a through probe into the matter.

Senators Shuja-ul-Mulk, Semeen Siddiqui, Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, Muhammad Anwar Baig, Khalid Soomro and Kulsoom Parveen besides Secretary Ministry of social Welfare attended the meeting.