By Allieu Sahid Tunkara
The West district coordinator of the Family Support Unit of the Sierra Leone Police has said that "over 90 % of Sierra Leonean children on the streets are being abused every day."
Detective assistant superintendent,Sia Sandy, told Politico in an exclusive interview that "these children are given assorted goods to sell on the streets instead of going to school."
She said most of them were children brought into Freetown from rural areas by their relatives who promised them good life and train them in schools. "Such a situation has led to massive dropouts among school children," said Sandy, adding that the role of any police agency, among many others, was to protect lives and property.So “it's our responsibility to get children off the streets.”
The police detective also revealed that they were working with partners such as UNICEF, Save The Children, National Commission for Children among others to achieve that objective.
The FSU coordinator added that to enhance proper co-ordination in the drive to remove children from the streets, they had implemented a policy known as “Operation Dawn” which was in line with the Education Act of 2004 and directly related to free primary and basic education nationwide.
She said the government policy to get children into schools would be difficult if they continued to stay in the streets and pointed out that girls were more vulnerable because “they are the ones who most likely to be sent out to sell goods on the streets.”
The National Director of Herman GmeinerSOS Children’s Village at Beach Road on Lumley, OlatungiWoode, said he was worried and because “about 165 children have been orphaned after their parents succumbed to the dreadful Ebola Virus Disease in Sierra Leone”.
The UN agency responsible for children’s welfare, UNICEF,agreed with Woode, adding that at least 3,700 children had become orphaned since the start of the Ebola outbreak in the region.
“Thousands of children are living through the deaths of their mother, farther or family members from Ebola,” says Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF’s regional director for West and Central Africa who just concluded a two-week tour of the three most affected countries in the region.
Meanwhile, a Save The Children report recently revealed that orphans were being rejected by their surviving relatives for fear of infection.
A local nongovernmental organisation in Freetown, Defense for Children International, DCI,said that most street kids eventually came in conflict with the law and ended up in courts.
DCI’s advocacy officer, Henry Tucker,said with the aid of social workers they had been engaged in monitoring courts to ensure that when such children were in conflict with the law, they were treated as juveniles.
“About 100 such children are going through the criminal justice process in Freetown alone”, he said.
Meanwhile, the head of FSU in the country, Superintendent Mira Koroma said that “Operation Dawn” was already in place but that it would be fully implemented after the Ebola outbreak.
“We decided to defer the operation because we have a few Ebola holding centres for children in the country”, Koroma said.
(C) Politico 09/10/14
