Dubai, March 25: Authorities in Umm Al Quwain have handed over three children of unknown parents to a social childcare centre of the Department of Social Services in Sharjah to look after them or find them foster families.
The children include a two-month-old babyand two boys — 17-year-old Khalid and six-year-old Ahmed.
Rashid Obaid Al Shihi, Deputy Director of the UAQ Medical District who is also the head of UAQ Hospital said the hospital and the UAQ Medical District in coordination with the emirate’s Community Policing Department, decided to hand over the children to a childcare centre in Sharjah, after they spent quite a long time at the hospital.
He noted that the decision was intended to provide the children with better living conditions. At the childcare centre, the boys can socialise with other children and the centre would be able to get interested parents to adopt them.
The medical authorities had been working with the UAQ Police to find the parents of these children but in vain.
Lt Col Khamis Salem Buharoon, Chief of Operations at emirate’s Police said that Col Shaikh Rashid bin Ahmed Al Mualla, Chief of the UAQ Police had in the recent months ordered for a comprehensive study of all cases of children with unidentified parents being kept in hospitals, in order to search for their families.
Shaikh Rashid also ordered for handing over of the children to the childcare centres so as to find them interested foster parents, added Khamis.
The officer noted that the police had in the recent months managed to re-unite a six-year-old boy, who was abandoned at a hospital in UAQ, with his Omani family after spending nearly six years at UAQ Hospital. It took two weeks to find the boy’s father who had just been released from prison. The boy was allegedly abandoned at the hospital by his father before his arrest, when he was two months old.
Meanwhile, Police in Umm Al Quwain, on Wednesday, found a newborn baby abandoned at Ramla village of UAQ. The child believed to be 24 hours old was discovered by an Arab woman and a resident of the area. The baby was found in a bag near her home.
The woman alerted the police who immediately arrived at the scene and transferred the child to UAQ hospital.
The baby will remain at the hospital as the police search for the parents.
–Agencies–