Dubai: Dubai Police’s Victim Support Programme has recently received many calls from residents who found children wandering in the streets alone due to parental negligence.

The programme helps victims of crime or those who had lodged police reports to communicate with the police. In such cases of negligence, children are considered victims and the programme takes action against parents.

Calls reporting parental negligence, he said, have grown after the UAE’s Child Protection Law came into effect, officials said.

Maj Gen Khalil Ebrahim Al Mansouri, Assistant to the Dubai Police Chief for Criminal Investigation Affairs, said, “The programme also provides moral support to the victims, and is carried out across all police stations.”

Dubai Police’s victim support programme has handled 57,965 cases in the first half of 2016 and 79,143 cases in the entirety of 2015.

“Last week we had two such cases, each involving a three-year-old Arab girl and both with speech difficulties,” he said.

Reem Al Ameri, from the victim support programme, said in the first case, an Asian man saw the girl crying next to a supermarket and he and a woman approached her to ask her where she lived. “The girl pointed them in the general direction of her home and they managed to find her building. People in the building recognised her and helped them get her to her mother,” she said.

The man had called the police.

“I visited the mother and asked her how her daughter was able to leave the house on her own,” Al Ameri said.

The mother said that she was sleeping after she got home from work and the door was open because she had to break the lock after losing her keys two days ago.

“I warned her and explained the risk she put her daughter in, as she could have easily tried crossing the road and got hit by a car. We also told her we will be checking on the girl weekly to ensure she is OK,” Al Ameri said.

In the other case, the three-year-old girl was found wandering in her neighbourhood at around 12.30am.

“A person alerted us to the incident the following morning and gave us her address. She said that people had already helped the girl back home, but she was concerned for her safety,” she said.

Al Ameri visited the girl’s home and they found out that the child’s mother was unwell and was staying with her husband’s mother and sisters.

The mother had left the girl in their care. The aunts said they got distracted for a moment and the girl managed to get out of the house as the door was unlocked, “She was trying to get to the neighbour’s house when people found her.”

“Parents should be more aware of their young children’s whereabouts and never leave the main door unlocked as it is very easy for children to get out on their own, as they are curious and are not aware of how dangerous it could be for them to be out alone,” she said.

She added that the programme has been successful and they have received many letters of thanks from the public for their work.