Children's Advocate, Mary Clarke, says her office has received close to 100 complaints of infringements of children's rights between February and August of this year.

Forty of these, she said were not within the purview of the Office of the Children's Advocate and were referred to the relevant bodies.

However, Mrs. Clarke noted that some were referred to the police for them to carry out their investigations.

Some of these complaints included child labour, begging, child abuse, among other things.

Speaking yesterday during a press briefing at the Courtleigh hotel, New Kingston, Mrs. Clarke said her office had received about 11 anonymous calls, which are difficult to follow up because persons are afraid to come forward.

She said there needs to be a strengthening of the witness protection programme to encourage persons to make reports.

Technical comments

"We're lobbying for the strengthening of the witness protection programme and we are looking at the victims charter to provide our own technical comments and to ensure that we adequately will address some of these problems," she said.

Meanwhile, the office of the Children's Advocate reported that some senior police officers were breaching the Child Care and Protection Act (CCPA), by detaining children in lockups with adults.

"It has come to the attention of the Office of the Children's Advocate that children are in fact being held at lockups with adults and so far we have sought successful intervention in having the children removed, granted bail or sent to juvenile remand centre or places of safety," said Sophia Frazer-Binns, legal policy officer in the Office of the Children's Advocate.

According to Mrs. Frazer-Binns, Section 66 of the CCPA, states that when a child is held in a lock up for any offence, all steps must be taken for that child to be kept separate from adults.