Monitor children rescued from early marriages: WCD dept
BHUBANESWAR: In a bid to make child marriage prevention efforts more effective, the Women and Child Development department has made it mandatory for district-level officers to produce every child rescued from such marriages before the child welfare committee (CWC) within 24 hours.
Such children in need of care and protection (CNCP) will be monitored on a regular basis for at least six months or till the child attains the marriageable age in order to ensure that the attempt for early marriage by the family or guardian is not being repeated, the department wrote to district-level social welfare and child protection officers on Tuesday.
A decision was taken after it came to fore in a majority of the child marriage cases that the child marriage prohibition officers are preventing, the child is not being produced before the CWC in all districts. Further, there is very low incidence of filing of police complaints by the child marriage prohibition officers in such cases. As a result, the necessary interventions are not provided on time to the children which has led to rise in cases where the child is victimised in the form of elopement, early marriage, sexual abuse and labour, the department said.