A CASE OF THE BEGGARLY KIDS

 According to UN sources there are up to 150 million street children in the world today. Chased from home by violence, drug and alcohol abuse, the death of a parent, family breakdown, war, natural disaster or simply socio-economic collapse, many destitute children are forced to eke out a living on the streets, scavenging, begging, hawking in the slums and polluted cities of the developing world. (http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/themes/fight-against-discrimination/education-of-children-in-need/street-children/)

On our traffic-prone roads is a negative phenomenon that is currently fast gaining root in the country — children begging. Most of these children come in the company of either their biological parents or guardians who use them to beg for money and as escorts for physically or visually challenged people. 

We see them everyday in between heavy traffic jams, either pulling the wheelchairs of the physically challenged or leading the visually impaired to passengers to beg for money.

                                             [kid begging at night, Osu Oxford street]

                                                 [kids begging in heavy traffic]

Around Spinal Junction near Accra Mall, neear Awudome Cemetery Junction in Accra, around the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, and even in Osu Oxford Street, a child would come and hold the hand of a pedestrian as he or she passes by or while seated for a drink and beg  for money to buy food to eat. Although this form of begging was initially linked to foreign children believed to be from the Sahelian Region, the strategy has, of late, been adopted by Ghanaian children.

                             [beggarly kid believed to be from the Sahelian Region]

The Department of Social Welfare (DSW) attached to the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU), is said to have announced plans to rid the streets of children who were used to beg and prosecute those who engaged them in the act, yet nothing has been done.

Doesn’t the potential for a bright future for these our future leaders look extremely bleak?