Child protection activists have urged government to address the pull and push factors drawing children in droves onto the streets.
According to police’s child and family protection unit, some 638 children (220 from Karamoja) have been removed from the streets in a two to three months’ operation run with Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA).
The actual number of street children is not known but recent enumerations reveal that there were 15,500 children aged seven to 17 years, living and/or working on the streets in the eastern districts of Iganga, Jinja, Mbale and the capital Kampala.
Maureen Muwonge, deputy director of Dwelling Places, said last week during a public dialogue on street children organised by a research policy centre, AfriChild at Makerere University, that despite the rehabilitation and resettling efforts of street children, new children keep showing up because the exploiters are benefiting.
Street children trading
Muwonge said child markets in Soroti and Katakwi where girls are sold for as low as Shs 50,000 and boys at between Shs 30,000 and Shs 20,000 still exist. And because of the interventions in Kampala, the exploiters have also changed strategy and now buy and take street children to other towns like Jinja and Nairobi in neighbouring Kenya.
She said the trafficked street children are also encouraged to become pregnant and get as many babies because Ugandans are more sympathetic to women with babies and easily give money. The more babies on the streets, the more money the exploiters earn. The trafficked street children are exploited for labour and sex.
Muwonge said between January and October, at least 131 trafficked children from Napak were intercepted enroute to Kampala to become street children. Muwonge said children and youth need to be empowered to know their rights, saying 95 per cent of the resettled children stay in homes especially if they are going to school.
Mondo Kyateka, commissioner, Children and Youth Affairs at the ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, said absent and violent parents are the reason children pour onto the streets. Mondo said street children are not just a social issue but a security threat as well.
“These people have never been loved and can’t love anybody. That is why they can pierce you. That is how Kifeesi [city gang] came to be… children sometimes are living under terror in your own homes. Mahatma Gandhi says poverty is the greatest form of violence.”
There were eight street children at the dialogue and Edwin from Kiboga said he ended up on the streets following a fight with his father over religion. He said he had just got ‘saved’ against his father’s wishes.
“There is nothing interesting on the streets because I was in a home. I want to complete school because I left home when I was in P.7.” he said.
Kasodde also a street child said he walked from his home area in Bugerere for the city streets because of extreme poverty and violence.
Not just Karamoja problem
Moses Wangadia from Retrak Uganda, an organisation that attempts to keep children off the streets, said there is a wrong perception that street children is just a Karamoja problem.
According to him, studies indicate that while Karamojong children constitute the biggest percentage of street children in all the study areas, the second-biggest percentage came from the indigenous population.
Superintendent of police Sophia Nambala said the issue of drugs in homes was being ignored as one of the biggest drivers of children onto the streets. She said the drugs lead to violent parents and children.