Over 50 Punjab Shelter Homes Unregistered, Safety Fears
More than 50 private shelter homes in Punjab are operating without registration, leaving the authorities without a clear and up-to-date record of the children living in them. Only 14 shelter homes in the province hold a licence from the Child Protection and Welfare Bureau, while applications from another four or five facilities are under review.
The figures point to a gap at the heart of Punjab’s child protection system. Private homes now provide more residential care than government institutions, yet the state cannot say how many such homes exist.
The numbers behind the concern
The last province-wide count comes from a mapping study carried out by the bureau with UNICEF Pakistan in 2021-22. It identified 105 residential care institutions in Punjab, 41 run by the government and 64 private, housing 5,762 children. Four years later, the government still has no updated data on these institutions.
Before a licence is granted, bureau officials inspect a home’s buildings, staff, facilities and child-care arrangements, followed by periodic inspections afterwards. Private homes provide accommodation, food, education and other basic facilities for orphaned, abandoned and vulnerable children, at a time when capacity in government institutions remains limited. The concern is not that private care exists, but that so much of it sits beyond regular checks on living conditions and the treatment of children.
Why Punjab shelter homes stay outside oversight
Experts say the registration system itself needs strengthening. Iftikhar Mubarak, head of the child rights organisation Search for Justice, said registration with the bureau could improve both the quality of services and the monitoring system. He suggested that homes should also have to produce a bureau registration certificate when registering with the Punjab Charity Commission or renewing that registration each year.
Child rights activist Rashida Qureshi said it was alarming that some institutions did not even have clear legal authority to keep children in their custody. She called for the registration and regular inspection of all shelter homes, along with uniform standards for children’s accommodation, food, education and healthcare.
Imtiaz Soomro, legal aid coordinator at the child protection organisation Sahil, said effective monitoring was needed across shelter homes, religious seminaries and boarding schools alike, and that it remained unclear which institution was responsible for monitoring under the current system. He added that abuse and exploitation in such institutions often go unreported, and that limited media access to some homes makes it harder for cases to come to light.
Cases that raised the alarm
Three recent cases show why the gap matters. The killing of 15-year-old orphan Waseem Abbas in Multan renewed concern about children in institutional care. Waseem, who lived at an NGO-run orphanage, was allegedly chased and run over by a contractor after being sent to work with him to learn electrical work. Police registered a murder case, while the bureau rejected the orphanage’s registration application.
In April 2024, 32 children were recovered from an unregistered orphanage in Gajjumata, Lahore, where the bureau said the children were living in two small rooms. A case was registered against the head of the institution under the Punjab Destitute and Neglected Children Act, although medical examinations did not confirm sexual abuse.
In September 2025, 18 children were taken into protective custody after a video showing children being subjected to violence at an unregistered institution in Chichawatni surfaced on social media. Police said the children had been physically abused. One caretaker was arrested, while cases were also registered against the institution’s administrators.
These cases are not the same story, but they share a pattern: children in homes that sat outside the licensed system, with problems surfacing only after harm had already occurred.
The gap in the system
The bureau said 11 Child Protection Institutes were operational in Punjab, while 25 Child Protection Units had been set up across the province, of which only six were functional. That thin official footprint helps explain why private homes carry so much of the load.
Feature Pakistan has followed this pattern before. The bureau took 16 children into protective custody after an incident in Multan, and the Waseem Abbas case later drew a demand from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan for an independent probe. The latest figures show the picture is still incomplete.
