Kampala Capital City Authority has revealed plans to wipe street children out of Kampala.
The Deputy Director Gender at KCCA, Josephine Lubwama says the Authority plans to close the two settlements in Katwe and Kisenyi that house the children on streets in a bid to free the city of the street children.
“We have settlements where children sleep and are exploited because someone offers them a place to stay. We are going to close those settlements so that traffickers stop bringing children because they know there is a place for them to sleep in Katwe and Kisenyi,” Lubwama said.
She made the remarks at the launch of the 18 days 467Km walk campaign from Kampala to Karamoja to raise awareness on the need to keep children off the street by giving them an education under the theme ‘Journey of Hope’s SchoolsNotStreets campaign’.
Speaking at the launch at Parliament, Lubwama emphasized such settlements attract more children traffickers to ferry in more children which has seen many struggle on streets.
Maureen Muwonge, the Deputy Director Child Protection at Dwelling Places calls for the need by the Ministry Of Gender, Labour and Social Development to step up efforts against child abuse which is partly contributing to the increase in the number of street connected children.
A number of children from streets used this opportunity to cry out to the concerned persons to get them off streets back to school so that they also meet their dreams.
In a 2015, report by the African Network for the Prevention and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect (AMPCAN) indicated that the number of street children in Uganda had risen to 10,000 representing a 70% increase since 1993.
ANPPCAN Uganda further highlighted that majority of the street children in Uganda join the street between 5 and 10 years (44%), while 42% joined when they were aged between 11-15 years and 6% when they were aged 16-18 years, with the number of children joining the street below 10 years being very small especially for those who are accompanied, implying that the children below 10 years who are on the street were either born there or just accompanying old ones.
In terms of origin of the street children, Majority of street children (57%) come from the Karamoja sub-region, mainly Napak district (44%) with the study indicating that as much as previously most children come from Karamoja, increasingly children are coming from other areas of the country (43%); underpinning the notion that street children is a national problem.
