Indian Railways to launch child rescue website and child care kiosks

New Delhi: The Indian Railway Ministry might soon launch a website for missing children who are found or rescued particularly from trains or railway stations. The website will carry details of children who ran away from their homes or were trafficked, along with their pictures, so they can be reunited more easily with their families.

About 200 child care kiosks are also planned across major railway stations in the country that will be nodal centres to help rescued children.

Suresh Prabhu, Minister of Railways, along with Maneka Gandhi, Minister for Women and Child Development, inaugurated one of the first of the 200 upcoming child care kiosks spread across the country, on Wednesday, at the New Delhi Railway Station.

The child care kiosks, which will acts as prime centres for rescued children, are planned to be put up in various major railway stations in India.

The Divisional Railway Manager of Northern Railway, Delhi Division, Arun Arora said: "The kiosks are being put up primarily to help children who either run away from homes or are trafficked, mainly from the eastern part of the country or Nepal who land up in Delhi," quoted The Hindu.

Arora said that the website was created on Prabhu's instructions which called for a website showing the pictures of children rescued from railways and linked to khoyapaya.gov.in – a similar website which is run by the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

The ministers also launched the 'Posters for Child Protection', which will be pasted on each of the Indian Railways operated 50,000 coaches. The posters have been created to "to involve public and generate awareness," said Arora. "They contain instructions on what to do if they find a child," he said.

"About 20 such kiosks will come up in Delhi Division alone, the first being at New Delhi railway station. In 2014-15, we have rescued 1,711 such children from Delhi," he added.

A helpline has also been started by the Indian Railway which people can use to call in case they have information on children who are wandering around on the stations or inside the trains, generally looking lost.

"Any passenger who sees a child loitering around can bring the child to the kiosk, which is being manned by NGOs 24X7, besides RPF personnel and our commercial staff. The kiosks will serve as an interface between the parents of the children or childcare centres if parents are not available," said Arora.

(Inputs from The Hindu)