Sometimes l wonder why we want to reinvent the wheel in Ghana. There is no problem that is new in the world and borrowing from others to solve ours, should not be a difficult thing to do. That is why l find the growing number of children living on the streets, a problem that we have allowed to grow. Instead of finding workable solutions to this festering canker, we have closed our eyes and pretended that it either does not exist, or that it will go away.
These children living in the streets is what has become the phenomenon called streetism. As someone who has lived in the inner parts of Accra, l must admit that it is not new—it has been with us for a while. However, what is worrying is the growth in the number of the children involved. It begun in a small way as boys selling dog chains and has now burgeoned into boys and girls engaged in all forms of economic activities and petty crimes on the streets.
The online learning resource, Wikipedia, defines streetism as “a broad term used to encompass the desperate situation of children who are forced to spend most of their time outside their homes, engaging in menial income generating activities in order to survive, and often having to sleep rough on the streets.” The phenomenon is growing in Ghana and we should not pretend that it does not exist. We must find a way to solve it before the situation gets out of hand.
In the past, Oxford and Opera Cinemas in Accra used to be the breeding grounds for such street children. In other parts of the country, it was the transport terminals that housed them. Though officials knew of their existence, everyone turned a blind eye, pretending they would go away even if nothing was done. The phenomenon did not die, but has evolved and has now taken a different form even though at the national level, there exists a policy on children. The question is: how is it being implemented to solve the problem?
Some people may like to blame parents for allowing their children to go wayward. But such a simplistic view cannot solve the monumental national problem that lies ahead. The truth is, some of these children just need a little guidance to grow into responsible citizens.
If we want to take the simplistic view, we would just use the Swahili proverb that, “it is not hard to nurse a pregnancy, but it is hard to bring up a child,” to blame the parents for being irresponsible. But this would not be entirely true because poverty is part of the problem. I saw the poverty side of the problem at Accra New Town when l was growing up. Let’s forget about the school of thought which advocates that poor people should not marry if they cannot take care of the products of such unions, because that would mean that the state has failed this group of people.
In Accra New Town, it was not irresponsibility on the part of the parents that took the children away from home – sometimes it was poverty. These poor parents would have wished to provide the barest minimum for their children, but for some, unemployment set in and this was followed by stress which led to alcoholism. This became a problem for some fathers and so, even though they cared about their children, they just could not cope. That is when the children ran away from home to fend for themselves.
Admittedly, sometimes it was curiosity and adventure on the part of the children, and where parental guidance and the extended family influence was not effective, the children went astray.
If it was just boys who were involved in streetism, there would not be much to worry about. There are young girls, mostly around the ages of 12 to 15, also involved and they become vulnerable as they are preyed upon sexually by older men. That is where the unending cycle begins for some of them.
The UK has had its fair share of this problem. According to an article posted on www.aboutbritain.com, “in 1848 an estimated 30,000 homeless, filthy children lived on the streets of London. Boys became chimney sweeps, worked the narrow shafts in coal mines or were employed beneath noisy weaving looms retrieving cotton bobbins. Others would shine shoes or sell matches to earn a crust.” This was due to the poverty that existed at the time.
Unlike us, they did not brush the problem aside, they thought about it and realised that, “education was the answer and ragged schools were set up to provide basic education. Others argued that crime was not caused by illiteracy; it was just encouraging a more skilful set of criminals! Others still thought that any money given to the poor was simply squandered on drink and gambling and did not solve the underlying social problems at all.” That was the starting point and they continued to study the situation in order to find a solution. In our case, it seems not much is being done, and the problem continues to change from one form into another.
A very good reason why we need to solve this problem is the story of one person who went from being in the street at Opera Cinema to become a responsible man. It took a teacher who saw the potential in the young boy to go to his aid. The teacher forced this boy to go to school by personally looking for him and virtually dragging him into the classroom. He paid the examination fees to enable the boy to sit the Common Entrance Examinations and that got him into secondary school with scholarship because of his high marks. The others, who no one cared about, lived the hard life and died the hard way.
Today, some of these children have graduated to become petty crooks. There is one that used to operate around the Ako Adjei interchange. He sheds tears, under the pretext that he has lost the money from the daily sale of sachet water. Those who are gullible give him money whilst others just walk away.
There are other youth who operate from the various street intersections around the country and l hope l am not the only person who has spotted these young children helping older visually impaired men and women or physically handicapped persons to beg in the streets. The country’s laws are clear about such abuse of children who should be in school. Yet, no one seems to care. What they do is nothing different from child-labour.
What is developing is akin to the “Talibes”-child beggars found across Senegal and Mali. According to a UNICEF briefing paper, “Talibes” are young boys of school-going age who are sent by their parents to study at Quranic schools but end up begging in the streets. It is important that we find a solution to this problem, otherwise, we would be preparing these children for a life of crime in future.
Therefore, if we cannot go back to find what the British did, there is another starting point. About two years ago, the Economic Community of West African States, (ECOWAS) started a US-funded project to fight streetism across the West African region. Officials in charge of children can chase this project up to see how they can fight the problem in our streets.
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