NEW DELHI: The care of urban poor children especially in large cities has been utterly neglected in India, according to a committee of experts who are due to release a study carried out in the national capital of Delhi. The study conducted by Forum for Creche and Childcare Services (FORCES), a non-governmental organization in Delhi showed that 60 percent women spend four to eight hours at work causing them to leave their children unattended at home or watched by relatives where usually they lack nutritional, health and social care and protection. “Children need a lot more than just food and their needs have not been articulated. We need to be their voice and build people's pressure till there is a law that recognizes the rights of young children,” said National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR)chairperson Shanta Sinha. The study included both mainly those living in the slums where usually both the parents works a daily wage laborers or in other tough professions keeping them away for long hours and their children at home taken care by neighbors and friends. “If we are capable of launching Agni-V, surely we are capable of providing safe and healthy arrangements for childcare,” Sinha added referring to India's recent launch of a Inter Continental Ballistic missile (ICBM) an achievement that was met with much pride by most of the country. The study also revealed that 72 percent of women said they wanted creche services to take care of their child's nutrition and security, around 29 percent said they left their children to be attended by elder siblings, while 45% said they left their children with neighbors or with the elderly people of the family, who no longer work. Cases of young girls being raped or physically abused by neighbors or by relatives are not uncommon and often go unreported after families themselves decide to hush up the matter.
