The Tangalle Magistrate’s Court placed three children who were abandoned by a father who went to the Tangalle unit of the Sri Lanka Foreign
Employment Bureau (SLFEB) requesting to bring back his wife, who went to work as a domestic worker in Kuwait, in the care of their grandmother on Tuesday (21).
This was when the three children were produced before court by the Women and Children Abuse Prevention Division officers of the Tangalle Police.
It was on February 20 that a 10-year-old boy, six-year-old girl and another boy aged one and a half years had been abandoned at the SLFEB.
K. Lahiru, a resident of Sampath Mawatha, Minipuragama, Vithragala, Ambalantota, the father of these three children abandoned them requesting that his wife who went for employment as a
domestic aid in Kuwait on July 22, 2022 be brought back. The children’s father said that his wife went abroad without his knowledge. He said that since the burden of caring for the three children had been left to him, a situation where he could not even engage in a job had arisen.He had visited the SLBFE Tangalle Unit, when he was summoned to hear a complaint he had lodged and he had abandoned the three children then.
He had not even participated in the hearing of the complaint and abandoned the three children but he had come to court on February 21 and requested the children be handed over to him.
However, the court had not handed over the children to him, according to the police and granted guardianship to his mother.
When the police had inquired of him why he abandoned the children, while in the court premises, he had said that he did so, as he thought that the SLBFE would not ensure justice for him.
This individual had said further that his wife who was abroad had not even called him as yet. However, the children had said that they had accompanied their father to Colombo to see off their mother and that the mother calls their father quite often.