GOVERNMENT URGED TO SPEND BIG ON STREET CHILDREN

Malawi should brace itself for increased crime rate if it does not come up with a comprehensive strategy to deal with street children who are daily being groomed into hard core criminals, a social commentator has warned.

Bonface Mandere, Advocacy and Research Officer for Eye of the Child said the strategy hinges on “government spending big” and “the street children being integrated back to the society where they came from”.

His comment comes at the back of vice president, Saulos Chilima’s recent statement that government will soon get rid of children and the disabled from the streets as it is believed they are being forced to beg and in a desperate attempt to meet the target of those who send them, are increasingly becoming dangerous.

The Malawi government once swept the children from the streets and dumped them in various orphanages but they soon returned to their base.

Mandere says it is because government left the responsibility solely to orphanages without providing any support for their well-being.

For the same reason, he predicted that the recent move is bound to fail again unless government becomes serious and starts budgeting for street children as well as devising proper arrangements to assimilate the children into the community so as to implement the 1991 United Nations Convention on the Rights of children.

“There is need for government to spend big other than just dumping the children in orphanages. The task should be championed by government and should not be left to non-governmental organizations alone. There should be a clear policy and all stakeholders should be involved in order to make sure children go back to the community.”

Mandere also said the society and non-governmental organizations should not be dispensers of largess to street children as that encourages them to remain there.

However, Isaac Friday, Site manager for Agape Trust, an organization that provide lunch and breakfast meals to street children from age 1 to 17, says people must first understand why children are found in the streets.

“These children are violent because they lack love. We’ve traced a number of them and found out that cruel treatment at home forces them to the streets. This is why we show them unconditional love by providing meals and lessons (to about 60 to 70 children) and so far we’ve seen great improvement in their behaviors.”

Friday thus pleaded with the government to concentrate on caring and providing for the street children other than rushing to remove them from the streets.