Second phase of Child Protection Centres Project launched

The Khwendo Kor, a civil society organisation, working for the empowerment of women and children, has launched the second phase of the Child Protection Centres Project in two southern districts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after successful completion of the first phase.
This was stated by Khalid Usman, Acting Chief Executive of the Khwendo Kor, while chairing a review and planning meeting of the project staff and stakeholders at the head office of the organisation here.
The acting head of the organisation and stakeholders expressed satisfaction at the activities and achievements of the Unicef-funded project and said that extension and launch of the second phase of the project goes to prove the hard work put in by the project staff in the last one and a half years.
The official said the project was launched on October 1, 2009 in Dera Ismail Khan and Tank districts of the southern belt of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under which 30 Child Protection Centres were set up there. He said running these 30 such centres was a difficult task which was done with devotion by the project team and the community activists.
Enumerating the achievements of the project to the stakeholders, Khalid Usman said over 7000 children benefited from project as they were facilitated by the Child Protection Centres. He said the centre facilitators, monitors and local community activists contributed to the successful implementation and completion of the project.
Programme Manager for the Capacity Building of the organisation Syeda Tamsila Shah said the project staff was adequately equipped with required knowledge to enable the children to ward off the hazards they might face due to any hostile situation, especially the one caused by displacement and floods. She said psychosocial support to the vulnerable children was an important part of the project and this component would be retained in the second phase of the project as well.
Programme Manager of Human Resource Development Ms Musarrat Syed told the meeting that keeping the policy of merit in view, full transparency was ensured in the hiring process in the first phase of the project as proper tests and interviews were conducted for taking the staff and this practice would be retained.
Khwendo Kor Finance Coordinator Mohammad Imran Kazmi said the Child Protection Project finances were subjected to proper scrutiny and all the amounts were released to the field centres after going through cross-verifications.
Project Proposal Coordinator Ms Gul Lalai told the participants of the meeting that the Child Protection Centres Project was a success because all the stakeholders were involved in it from the day one. She said the project was designed, discussed, documented and implemented keeping in view the ground realities.
Sustainable Livelihood Programme Manager Tehsin Rafiq said coordination of the Child Protection Centres Project team staff was the main reason for the success of the first phase of the project. Its four months initial trial period and later one-year extension showed the confidence of the implementing partners in the work of the project team, she pointed out.
Zaheer-ud Din Babar said, he and his team, monitored the project properly by undertaking the visits to the Child Protection Centres on fortnightly and monthly basis. He said the bottlenecks, if any, were removed in time by the monitoring team for the smooth functioning of the project.
Acting Chief Executive of the Khwendo Kor, Khalid Usman, said the first phase of the Child Protection Centres Project had ended on January 31 this year, adding keeping in view the funding pledged by the donors, the staff in the next phase of the project had been cut from 42 to 22. He said 10 staff members for the project had been appointed while the remaining 12 would be appointed soon. He said that unlike in the first phase now the number of the Child Protection Centres had been planned to be 20, adding there are 11 such centres in Dera Ismail Khan and nine in Tank.
The official lamented that some of the former staff members of the project were using unlawful means for rehiring. He said they were using different tactics despite the fact that their hiring contracts had ended with the completion of the project and that the new funds constraints had lessened the number of the Child Protection Centres and staff engaged in it. He resented the pressure tactics being employed by these elements to force the management to dole out jobs.