Parents faulted for promoting begging
One of the rehabilitating homes for street kids in the country, Chisomo Children’s Club has faulted parents for encouraging children to go to the streets and beg.
Centre Manager for the club, Auspicious Ndamuwa, raised the issue on Sunday during a sensitisation meeting between the club and parents in Mbayani Township.
Ndamuwa also said that Mbayani was one of townships in Blantyre contributing about 90 percent of children who are found in the streets begging.
“There is the 2010 Child Care, Protection and Justice Act which has specific provisions for the way how parents and guardians have to take care of their children. We discovered that many children that are coming from Mbayani go on the streets because they are being sent by their parents or by their guardians. So we decided to engage these duty bearers so that they can understand the provisions that are there in the new act,” said Ndamuwa.
Chisomo Children Club which has partnered with Mbayani primary, police and the community to publicise the act, has also discovered that some children found in the streets pretend to have no homes and no-one to look after them.
Headmaster for Mbayani Primary School, one of the schools with the highest enrollment in Africa (10,274 learners), Beard Sailesi, said with proper care and counselling, these children have the ability to perform better in school.
“We have got almost 27 learners who were withdrawn from the streets by Chisomo Children’s Club, the only challenge they face is learning materials, but their performance is fairly good,” said Sailesi.
Blantyre Police Station Community Policing Coordinator, Horace Chabuka, said withdrawing children from the streets has several benefits.
“If they are in the streets today, and yes they are able to get something at the end of the day, but what if they are grown up, and become ashamed of begging? Automatically they will turn into criminals. So the time is now to withdraw them from the streets to protect them and the nation too,” said Chabuka.
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