HYDERABAD: A small rented place, five family members with Aadhar cards, and Rs 500 is all one needs to start a shelter home for the underprivileged children in the city. And this is considered legal if registered with a set of copy-pasted by-laws at the sub-registrar office of the Registration of Societies.
And if one manages to pull it off, which rather looks easy, he or she can earn lakhs of rupees as donations, all at the expense of innocent children.
Though these homes remain illegal if they are not registered with the Women Development and Child Welfare Department, the ease of operations -- in establishing and running such establishments, in Telangana is enabling numerous illegal shelter homes to operate in the city under the garb of helping homeless orphans.
It was in one such illegal shelter home at KPHB that four teenage girls were allegedly assaulted by a neighbour.
The ease of opening such homes has led to mushrooming of such centres and the issue has become so rampant that even the Child Welfare Committees is finding it difficult to deal with the situation. In fact, the authorities have no clue as to how many such homes are being run in the twin cities.
Anybody can start a trust or a society after registering with the Registration of Societies. Ideally after starting one, one must seek licence of operation from the Women and Child Welfare Department.
But due to lack of knowledge and for ulterior motives many fail to do that. This then leaves the children at risk of being managed in whatever way the shelter homeowners deem it right. And the responsibility of finding these homes rests on CWC and District Child Protection teams.
“Many a time when we revoke licences or deny reissuing them, they just go elsewhere and start a new home. It is as easy as that,” said B Padmavathi, chairperson of CWC Rangareddy.
In Medchal jurisdiction alone, over 100 Child Care Institutes have applied for the formal licences from WDCW Department.
“From our surveys we found that most of these homes have very poor facilities. There is not even a board outside to denote that there is a shelter home. We have recommended licences for only to 37 such homes,” added one of the DCPO.
Another problematic trend the authorities noted was that most illegal homes end up having only four to five children.
“The moment we see a home with such limited number of children kept in a home like set up, we can be sure there has been a case of abuse or some irregularity under the Juvenile Justice Act,” said another official.