IRCS to Help Rescued Northeast Kids Reunite With Parents

By J Jeyasingh Satyaraj

  Tirunelveli, Feb 1 : A week after the rescue of 76 children hailing from Assam and Manipur from an unregistered orphanage in Kanyakumari district, efforts are on to identify the parents of the children, so that they can be handed back to them.

Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS) has come forward to help the children with its unique tracing wing especially meant to restore and maintain contact with family members and clarify the fate of persons reported missing.

When contacted, N Krishnamurthy Tracing Officer, IRCS TN branch, said that IRCS has taken the task seriously and was progressing in identifying their families.

According to him, tracing operations carried in Manipur has yielded results whereas in Assam the process was underway. “Initially our counterpart in Manipur experienced difficulty in understanding the language of the boys, as the dialect appeared to be one spoken by the tribal community and later it was confirmed that some of them belong to the Zeliangrong community of Tousem sub-division of Tamenglong District in Manipur which is somewhere near the northern part of India- China border,” he said.

The tracing officer said that IRCS besides tracing the parents has established contacts with the Social Welfare Department of the Manipur government, to take steps to send the children back to Manipur.

Moreover, the ‘Zeliangrong Union ZU’ an apex organization for the community has been talking with the concerned department in TN and has already informed the matter to the Chennai unit of ZU and instructed them to take appropriate action.