• Keeping children out of school & neglect due to divorce, commonly seen says NCPA

There has been an increasing number of child neglect cases in Anuradhapura amidst worries of neglect on child welfare and education.

“The high numbers of child abuse cases reported in Anuradhapura is due to neglect resulting from divorce and children being allowed to drop out of school,” the Anuradhapura District Child Protection and Psychosocial Officer of the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA), M.M.M. Dasanayake told The Daily Morning yesterday (1). “There are only a very few cases of sexual abuse. However, we see so many parents neglecting their children and not sending them to school."

Due to this trend, the Police will be conducting awareness sessions on reducing child abuse and neglect following high numbers of complaints in the Anuradhapura District. Speaking to The Daily Morning, the Police Media Spokesperson, Deputy Inspector General of Police Nihal Thalduwa said that the Police has gathered statistics and are creating awareness sessions for the public. “While conducting arrests of perpetrators of child abuse, we will also be observing the trends and conducting awareness sessions in order to prevent abuse from happening,” Thalduwa said yesterday. Thalduwa confirmed that while reports of child abuse in Anuradhapura being high is true, it was only slightly higher than other parts of the country.

The NCPA also confirmed that there is no significant difference between the numbers of child abuse cases in Anuradhapura and in the other regions.