By Olindhi Jayasundere

The National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) hotline 1929 for public complaints on child abuse has received 21,507 complaints up until April 30 this year, the Ministry of Child Development and Women’s Empowerment said..

The hotline which was introduced in June 2010 was set up for the public to report incidents of any form of child abuse. A ministry official said that although there have been thousands of reported cases only 4323 of them have been genuine.

He said that the most reports cases of child abuse have been in Colombo, Gampaha and Kalutara districts. He said the reason for the high number of reported incidents in these areas was due to the dense population.

The Ministry of Child Development and Women’s Empowerment, the NCPA and several NGO’s recently met to discuss the major issues burdening children in Sri Lanka and methods of controlling them and will form a committee for this purpose, the ministry source said.

NCPA Chairperson, Anoma Dissanayake said that the primary objectives of the committee are to develop a national data base on child abuse and for the NCPA to provide safe homes for victimized children.

“The hotline 1929 for public complaints has helped us identify and take action against child abuse cases and with the help of the hotline we hope to control the problem to a great extent by the end of this year,” Dissanayake said.

She said that compared to other countries Sri Lanka does not have a growing trend of child abuse but that said there is still a lot of work to be done to control the issue.