The NGOs took an initiative to develop a 'national child help line' a year ago to help these children and their parents, but the move has been stalled.

Under the initiative, the NGOs are supposed to develop a countrywide network to extend instant and long-term help to the lost children through coordinated efforts.

The help line initiative will have a toll-free hotline telephone number so that anybody can inform the network about any lost child.

The concerned child rights organisations, institutions and government departments will be linked to this network for ensuring support and care to the children in need.

Treatment, counselling, rescue, shelter and legal aid would be ensured for the children through the specialised partner organisations.

"My father is Rashid Poddar and mother's name is Hazera," said three and a half years old Nayan at a shelter home in Mirpur. But Nayan cannot remember where his home is.

Police picked him up from the street and sent him to the drop-in centre.

" I dreamt of my mother last night...she is very beautiful. She fed me puri in the dream. I want to go to her," Nayan said while talking to Star City on Friday.

Like him, five-year-old Janu cannot tell her address but she always wish to go to her parents. Janu is living in a drop-in centre at Arambagh.

Star City found more than a hundred children aged bellow ten years at different drop-in centres run by NGOs, which are dealing with lost children.

Aminul Islam, a coordinator of Aparajeyo Bangladesh, an NGO dealing with child rights, told Star City that police often bring these lost children to the NGO.

The NGO gets 2/3 such children daily from the police stations of the city. The government has no mechanism to return such children to their parents, he said.

"Police is bringing such children to us regularly but our centres are overloaded. The government shelter homes are not liveable for these children. We saw a number of children fled recently from such a centre at Dhola in Mymensingh, he said.

He said the NGOs provide the lost children with food and shelter. They search out their parents if possible. If they fail, those children grow up at the shelter homes.

Doulat Akbar, officer in charge of Ramna Police Station, said he always send such children to the government shelter homes or safe custody or to the NGOs.

The children who can tell their addresses are sent to their parents directly.

Wahida Banu, chairperson of Bangladesh Shishu Odhikar Forum, an umbrella organisation of the NGOs, said, "A national help line can solve the problem easily."

She said that prevailing help lines of the NGOs are not enough to return those children to their parents.

Returning these children to their parents often requires coordinated search because those children cannot say anything about their home.

It is Bangladesh Shishu Odhikar Forum which initiated to develop a national child help line for the children at risk.

Wahida said Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board has already approved the proposal for providing a hotline number for the national help line.

The proposal is now waiting for final approval of the finance ministry.

"As the hotline is a toll-free number and the finance ministry has to bear the expenditure, they have to decide whether they will approve it or not. But they should not make delay for the sake of protecting child rights," Wahida said.