Gloomy picture of children begging for alms on streets - Need for urgent attention

The sight of children, both from Ghana and foreign countries who beg for alms on the streets across the country, paints a gloomy picture. According to the Child Rights International (CRI), a non-governmental organisation concerned with the welfare of children, this calls for the strengthening of the social support system and the institution of proactive measures to ensure that the children are protected, taken off the streets and integrated with their families.

The Executive Director of Child Right International, Mr Bright Kwela Appiah, has ,therefore, urged the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Gender, Children and Social Protection and the Interior to take the appropriate action to repatriate all non-Ghanaian children who beg for alms on the streets of the country.

Addressing the organisation’s media child protection accountability series, Mr Appiah said the ministries must engage the embassies of the countries from where the child beggars have migrated to Ghana to facilitate their safe repatriation.

Mr Appiah, who expressed concern over the growing rate of children on the streets which put the lives of the children at risk and expose them to sexual predators, said non-Ghanaians could also be recognised under Ghana’s social safety net in order to make it possible for them to access rights of Ghanian children within Ghana’s Social protection system.

Activities

He said another gloomy picture was the issue of Ghanaian children engaged in selling at traffic intersections, carrying loads in market places, begging for alms or being used by adults who are either aged or persons living with disability to beg for alms, and sometimes clean wind screen of vehicles at the various traffic intersections.

Although the organisation could not give details on statistics on the total number of children on the streets of Ghana, it said the phenomenon was becoming alarming, pointing out that, "Streetism has gradually become one of the most widespread child protection issue in cities across the countries such as Accra, Kumasi, Takoradi and Tamale."

Mr Appiah said children of schooling age were found roaming the street during school hours, making it impossible for them to access their rights to education, safety, quality healthcare among others.

Sleeping places

At night, he said these children slept on pavements, in front of stores and other places without proper shelter, and at the mercy of mosquitoes and sexual predators.

The children on the street, he said also stood the danger of being recruited into dangerous vices such as armed robbery and prostitution.

Mr Appiah said the CRI recently undertook a study where the activities of street children in some parts of Accra were observed for a month.

He said when some of the children were interviewed, they disclosed that they engaged in begging and selling on the street due to their parents inability to fulfil their role as parents.

Some of the children, Mr Appiah said claimed they were instructed by their parents to beg for money for the upkeep of the family.

The study, he said, found that most of the children were migrants from rural areas to the city with their parents in search for financial sustainability.

To nib the menace in the bud, he entreated the public to return to the communal system of child upbringing where caring for children was a communal responsibility and not just that of the parent of the child.