The Women and Child Development (WCD) ministry is roping in the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) to help rehabilitate children lodged in child care centres in areas near SSB outposts. The SSB is a border police force that mans the frontiers that India shares with Nepal and Bhutan. As part of the programme, the SSB centres will impart vocational skills to the children as an effort to rehabilitate them.
The effort will take off in Assam this December, following which SSBs in West Bengal, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh will also launch similar programmes. Officials from the National Commision for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) had approached the SSB to help impart vocational skills to children in CCIs.
The SSB, which routinely carries out vocational training among the youth in border areas will help the children learn skills like driving, computer literacy, spoken English, bee-keeping, growing mushroom, masala-making, bakery, wax-making, etc. The SSB, as part of a MoU under the Skill India campaign in August 2016, is now establishing a vocational training school in Gorakhpur. In Sikkim, where the SSB carries out these camps and drug awareness campaigns, the force has helped open three bakeries.
“Only children in the age group of 15 to18 years of age will be roped in for the vocational training where they will be taught self-defense skills. The idea is to make them self-reliant so that they can live a life of dignity once they are out of the facility,” said WCD secretary Rakesh Srivastav. He added that for children below 15 years, the SSB will provide medical check-ups, psychological counselling and other important skills. Srivastav also said that children who display remarkable skills might also find employment in the SSB.
Kavindra Kumar Karna of the SSB said that the children who have the requisite skills will be absorbed as part of the SSB’s “follower” facility. “We have decided to take in the children through the sports quota, or as cooks, carpenters, electricians, etc.,” said Karna, adding that the stigma of being in a CCI in case the child was a juvenile offender will be erased with a stint with the SSB.
