By Sitta Turay
They are often times brought to Freetown from the provinces, especially from villages. They are taken to strange homes and handed over to strange people in the hope that they will be taken care of. These host families are sometimes so strange that even their skins are different. Their parents are assured that their children will be well – meaning they will be treated like normal children in a normal family, attending school, playing and being happy. Pretty much like any other child of the world.
I am referring to children known in Sierra Leone as “mehn pikin” or wards or to a certain extent foster children. Sadly these are some of the most neglected or even abused children of our country. Almost every household is guilty of the crime of taking in a child and treating them as an adult – denying them their childhood and using them as virtual slaves?
Almost every home in Sierra Leone is holding at least one child that is locally fostered and treated like an outsider, maid or an unpaid domestic worker. These innocent children are the ones that are doing almost all domestic work in households but treated as the least of persons. They are the first to wake up and the last to go to bed. They look sleepy all the time throughout the day. Leave them idle for five seconds, they doze off. Their eyes are always red. They look haggard and dejected. They do not have any right in the household. Everyone in the house commands or orders them. They fetch water and wood, depending on where they find themselves. They are quick to tears because their heart bleeds. They are not even allowed to cry out loud so they sob when in trouble.
Most of them do not attend school, instead they are charged with the responsibility to drop their colleague kids off in school and pick them up later. Some are used as guides for either blind relatives or hired to do so.
It is done sometimes at a very tender age. Kids as young as nine years or less are seen in Sierra Leone being used as maids for indigenous Sierra Leoneans, Lebanese and Indians. It is done in the open and no one has raised concern at any point in time. They are the little kids who do the job for adults and no one cares or protests about it. These kids live the life of an uncertain future.. In other words, they have not got any direction as far as their future is concerned. They live a stressful life with so much domestic responsibility as young as they are.
Despite their predicament, these children stay strong and keep their culture and tradition intact. At their very little free time, they will role-play and practice to speak their mother language and act as their tradition requires. They often soliloquize, not necessarily because they are stressed up, but as a therapy for them.
When they see anyone who speaks their mother tongue, they become very excited and try to speak it themselves. They are not heard or their views sought, because they live in slave-like conditions. Children betrayed!
I met a little boy that had listened to the Free Education jingle. As a matter of fact, we listened to it together. A segment of the jingle says that going to school is compulsory. No sooner had the jingle ended than the little boy jolted saying: “this law is so nice but oh ya my guardian will not respect it”. It shows how these wards also want to be accorded the same rights as other children.
Even though significant child rights have been addressed in laws that have been enacted, there is still so many to be done. Children who are left with other families to be taken care are all suffering in silence. They have been left in that dark world for so many years. Children rights organizations are also doing some fantastic job but most of them are not even thinking about this category of children. Many of these children are left to languish and later become the lost generation.
There is a unique story of a woman who lived along Ross Road, very close to the police station that was in the habit of going up country to collect children just to come and use them to sell her cooked food. She used the children to do almost the entire job in her business with no regard to the children’s rights.
At one time she beat up the little boy to death because he spilled a bottle of kerosene she had sent him to buy. If it were not for the vigilance and bravery of the little kid sister of the deceased, the story would have died with the boy. The little girl reported the incident to the Police who later pressed court charges. The woman and her children were found guilty of manslaughter and duly sentenced to jail terms.
I have just highlighted the above, to show how much of these acts are taking place often unreported. Everywhere in Sierra Leone children are misused and treated like adults in the name of foster parenting. As I write, there are children in many strange homes being treated like slaves and needing the attention of every Sierra Leonean, despite the entrenched rights of children in our laws.
This is a clarion call for the government and its leadership to start considering removing the Family Support Unit from the Sierra Leone Police and making it an independent agency that will be fully charged with family issues, especially issues pertaining to the wellbeing of children.
Are our police ATM machines?
The key missions of the Sierra Leone Police force include the following: “to prevent crime, to protect life and property, to detect and prosecute offenders, to maintain law and order, to ensure safety and security, to enhance access to justice and to ensure police primacy for internal security and safety” (www.police.gov.sl).
According to that same Police website, the above is supposed to be the functions of the Sierra Leone Police. For me, it is a huge task. It is a task that requires almost everything especially truthfulness, nationalism and dedication.
Anyway, ATM means Automatic Teller Machine. It is a machine that dispenses cash or performs other banking services.
When the late former president Ahmed Tejan Kabbah attended his first police passing-out ceremony, he told the gathering that “the police are servants and not masters”. After that, the late President sought to make the Police better and a “Force for Good”. He hired the services of a British Cop, Keith Biddle, from Manchester and went out to international partners seeking support to help rebuild the force. He did that deliberately to build confidence in the people for the Police. That was when the Complaint Discipline Internal Investigations Division (CDIID) and the Family Support Unit (FSU) were created for the main purpose of professionalism. It worked to some extent. By the time Kabbah was leaving power, the police had reasonably got the human capacity and somehow were finding it very difficult to solicit or accept bribes the way it is right now.
Over the years and when government has changed, the Police have deteriorated so drastically that people start to see them as an ATM that provides money fast. That is demonstrated by the rush and clamour by huge numbers of people to enlist in the force. There is a mad rush for it and Sierra Leone has become one of the few countries that do not have to go into communities to convince potential candidates for police recruitment. I make bold to say that this is not for love of the force or national service, rather for ease and quickness of enrichment.
Present Police officers are afraid of nothing as far as taking a bribe is concerned. Starting with the Traffic division, it is open secret that officers extort money from almost everyone including sometimes pedestrians. It is commonplace to see a police officer impounding and taking over vehicles, motorbike or tricycle taxis, by removing the driver or rider and riding away the transport. Sometimes these police officers do not even have a driver’s license. They arrest motorists for a crime that they end up committing. They ride bikes without helmets but arrest bike riders for not wearing one. When they impound motor bikes they sometimes fraudulently convert them to theirs and do not bother with the license and insurance.
Those bad activities of the Police have created disrespect for the force. The Sierra Leone Police force needs strong hands for transformation. The Police must be overhauled. Special training on how to dispense their job must be instituted. It has been eleven years since the police lost their “Force for Good” status. Get into any Police station and tell them of a complaint you want to make, the first expectation is MONEY. Nowadays Police officers are not even scared to ask anyone for money. Something is gravely wrong that must be fixed.
Since the APC left, nothing has changed. It is the same mentality that existed in the police during the APC that continues today. The police force must be salvaged.
© 2019 Politico Online
