‘State lacks rehab facilities for trafficked children’

SHILLONG: Child trafficking is a growing problem in the North East, including Meghalaya, but successive state governments’ indifference to prioritise the issue has it difficult to curb the crime, the chairperson of the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Meena Kharkongor, has said.
Addressing a gathering at a seminar titled ‘Voice of the Voiceless’ focusing on child trafficking in the state and other parts of the region, Kharkongor said the satte does not have proper rehabilitation facilities for children rescued from the grip of traffickers. There is no healthcare or psychological care for the victims, she informed.
“The victims are vulnerable and they should be treated with utmost care, especially with concern to their emotional and mental being, further there should be proper steps during investigations of such crimes so as not only resulting in rescuing of the children but also in rooting out these trafficking cells from the society,” she added.
The Department of English and Communications, MLCU and the final semester post-graduate students of the Department of Counselling Psychology, MLCU along with Impulse NGO Network, Shillong, and the State Resource Centre for Women, Department of Social Welfare, came together to organise the seminar on March 9.