Three more KP districts to have rehab institutes for street children

PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Social Welfare Department Secretary Muhammad Idrees has said the government is planning to expand the services of model-institute for street children in Peshawar “Zamung Kor” to three other districts. The model institutes will be established in Swat, Dera Ismail Khan and Haripur for which the PC-I has been finalized.

Speaking at a meeting about the one-year performance of the Social Welfare Department, the secretary said that in addition to sub-campuses of Zamung Kor, an institute for female street children will also be established in Peshawar, which will accommodate around 200 street children for rehabilitation. The parents of the children will also be provided with stipend.

The secretary said the government was also reopening the child protection units closed in 12 districts of the province, for which the procurement process was underway. He added that government was working on war footing basis against drug addiction, and has established rehabilitation centres in eleven districts of the province.

These centres with the rehabilitation of the drug addicts also provide skills to them, he said and added that so far 516 drug addicts had been rehabilitated in the province, while 80 were still under treatment in these rehabilitation centres.

Muhammad Idrees said that to address issues of the elderly people in the province the department had started registering them and 785,000 senior citizens had been registered so far.

He said that senior citizen support centre has been established in Peshawar, while they would be provided with machine-readable cards, through which they could avail various facilities.

The secretary said an endowment fund would be established for the welfare of the transgender community, for which the department is formulating the law.

He said that 527 transgender persons had been registered to date in KP of which almost half were provided with Sehat Insaf Cards. The secretary added that the government was working to replace 1981’s ordinance for special persons with an act which would ensure the rights of special people.

He said the job quota of special persons would also be increased to four per cent under the law, adding that 1000 motorbike carriers would be provided to special persons in the province. Of these, he explained, 250 motorbikes carriers had been included in PC-1 for special persons of the tribal districts.

The official said the department was working hard to provide a safe working place for women.

He said that 18,292 poor patients benefited from Zakat fund allocated for the health sector, of which 9066 patients availed treatment on provincial level, while 9226 were treated on district-level hospitals.

Similarly, the secretary said, the department had started a programme titled Special fund for Health, through which 30 million rupees had been allocated for patients suffering from various diseases.