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Orphanages ‘not doing the needful’

ABU DHABI — Orphanages lag behind in providing their inmates with the much-needed emotional succor and security, a social worker from Kerala has said.

According to M.A. Mohammed Jamal, General Secretary of Wayanad Muslim Orphanage (WMO), children grown up at orphanages always prefer to stay aloof from the mainstream society largely due to their inferiority complex.

"The feedback we receive about our students from higher educational institutions or work place points to the same fact. It clearly shows that their emotional needs do not get satisfied at a place like orphanage, which merely provides a place to stay and custodial care," Jamal remarked.

He added that it has also been noted that on many occasions these people even develop a feeling of animosity towards the institution that fostered them and the people who took care of them.

Lack of professionally skilled and trained supervisors and care takers at these organisations, he pointed out, is one of the main reasons why many orphanages cannot live up to the expectations of these children.

"Most of the orphanages in Kerala lack such personnel who can understand the psychological mindset of these children and deal accordingly," he said, underlining that the staff and committee members at WMO are trained at the National Institute for Public Co-operation and Child Development, Bangalore.

Presently WMO has over 700 inmates and also runs a Madrassa, Arabic College, a primary school, a high school, vocational higher secondary school, a school for blind, deaf and dumb, two English medium schools and an arts and science college.

WMO has an ambitious project to develop its Imam Gazzali Academy into a multi-lingual religious institution that incorporates a modern educational system too. It is on the process of setting up a Dh1 million worth reference library that will attract religious scholars and academicians from different parts of the country.

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