A joint study taken up by UNICEF and AP Alliance for Child Rights, revealed gross violation of child rights and shocking incidents of child abuse and rise in child marriages during the pandemic.
Many children were orphaned during the first and second waves of COVID-19. School dropout rate is on the rise and the virus has severely impacted on the health condition of kids, the study says.
State SC and ST Commission Chairman M. Victor Prasad, Adviser to Education Department (Nadu-Nedu) A. Murali, District Education Officer Tahera Sultana, Women Development and Child Welfare Department Assistant Project Director S. Jaya Lakshmi released the study report here on Tuesday.
The study was conducted in Visakhapatnam, Krishna and Kurnool districts. To know the pre and post-COVID situation, the study focussed on health & nutrition, child protection and education, said UNICEF communication specialist Prosun Sen.
Dropouts
Enumerators gathered information from 335 children, aged between 6 and 18, of which 266 were studying in government schools, 69 in private schools and colleges. Information related to continuing education, child protection and health and nutrition aspects were also gathered, said Alliance for Child Right convener P. Ramesh Sekhar Reddy.
Of the 335 children interviewed, 264 said they had stopped studies (school dropouts), 44 said they were working as child labourers, 25 expressed that they might get married off and complaints of trafficking were also reported.
Lockdown has seen an increase in child rights violations. Childline, an NGO and also supported by Ministry of Women and Child Development, received 4,60,000 calls in first 21 days of the lockdown. Of them, 30% were related to sexual abuse, child labour and minor marriages, Mr. Sen said.
Child labour
The pandemic has increased stress among children due to loss of parents, and the children were forced to take up daily wage jobs to feed the other family members, said ACR State coordinator Gode Prasad.
According to the analysis, 175 of the 335 child respondents said that they were not attending online classes, only 11 children said that they have been studying online. Of the 175, 104 students said they have neither laptop nor desktop and 39 students said they do not have any type of internet connection facility, Mr. Reddy said.
Most of the children were suffering with psychological problems by staying at home for a long time. Due to fear of infection of COVID-19, they were not attending classes or meeting or playing with friends and were not having any physical activity for the last two years, Mr. Prasad added.
