CHILD HELP DESKS SOON AT 55 RLY STATIONS

HAJIPUR:The railways has okayed a proposal to set up child help desks (CHDs) at 55 railway stations, including nine in Bihar and Jharkhand, to check trafficking of children by trains.

On an average, around 10,000 children, majority of them girls, are rescued every year by the Railway Protection Force (RPF).

To save children in distress, the ministry of railways, after consultation with ministry of women and children development, had earlier circulated standard operating procedure (SOP) in railways.

A letter issued by Dharmendra Kumar, director general (DG), RPF, to all the general managers, including that of ECR, has directed them to set up the CHDs soon. Chief spokesperson, ECR, Rajesh Kumar said the railways is committed to providing space for setting up CHDs at the nominated stations free of cost to the NGOs selected by ministry of women and child development.

At Hajipur railway station, 12 teams of volunteers along with the GRP and RPF personnel would man the CHD round the clock.

Meanwhile, nodal director of one of the proposed CHD at Hajipur Junction, Sudhir Shukla of Late Kanhaiya Shukla Social Services and Research Organisation, said: “In Bihar, the CHDs will be set up soon at Hajipur, Muzaffarpur, Gaya, Darbhanga stations in Bihar and Dhanbad in Jharkhand under the East Central Railway (ECR). One CHD each will be set up at Bhagalpur under Eastern Railway (ER), Chapra Junction under North Eastern Railway (NER), Katihar under Northern Frontier Railway (NFR) in Bihar and one at Tatanagar under South Eastern Railway (SER) in Jharkhand.”

Railway stations in Maharashtra, MP, Gujarat, Goa, UP, Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Chandigarh, Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and West Bengal have also been nominated for setting up the CHDs.