Hyderabad: Questions persist on orphanage inmates

Nampally: Following failure of authorities to provide details about the inmates of Anees-ul-Ghurba, the oldest orphanage in the city at Nampally, activists have raised a pitch, asking TS Wakf Board and TMREIS (Telangana Minority Residential Educational Institutional Society) to make public their particulars and ensure that around 200 children are in safe hands.

Following handing over of the land which housed the century old state-run orphanage, Anees-ul-Ghurba, to TMREIS in the recent years, the inmates were shifted to institutions being run by the Society. However, following enforcement of Covid-19 norms since March 2020, most of them were sent back to their places. But the activists who visited the locations where the children were sent say most of them do not have parents to take care of them. "When I questioned Mohd Saleem, Chairman, Wakf Board, he said the children were at a Telangana Minority Welfare School in Musheerabad. But when I enquired about the children there, the caretakers informed that the children were in Goshamahal, a branch of the same school. But the people responsible for the school in Goshamahal have no clue about the children and I was asked to visit Barkatpura branch," claimed Asif Hussain Sohail, a social activist, who used to visit the orphanage regularly.

When contacted, Mohammed Abdul Lateef, the Academic Head of TMREIS, refuted the claims of activists, saying the actual number of children of the orphanage was different and they were not completely orphan. "These children had guardians and as soon as the lockdown was announced, they were sent back home with their respective guardians," he pointed out.

Not satisfied with the claim of authorities, activists insist that explanations given by Wakf Board and TMREIS were contradictory and that the TMREIS schools which earlier provided accommodation do not have any clue about the whereabouts of children. "When the entire nation was under lockdown, how could the guardians come to pick the children? Why did the schools send back all the children? Nobody seems to be taking proper responsibility of children and they do not have proper details of present addresses of the children," rued Sohail.