Institute for War & Peace Reporting (London)
Héritier Maila
16 November 2009
Lubumbashi — Activists in the southern province of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, have urged the authorities to try to return shegues, or street children, currently in care to their parents.
They also want officials to come down heavily on parents who are suspected of abandoning their children, saying they should be brought before the courts.
Officials have started rounding up legions of shegues, who have been blamed for a range of ills from begging to arson, offering them schooling and work with the local government.
Thanks to the operation, which began in August, the provincial administration now houses close to 1,000 children in a training centre just a few metres from Lubumbashi's Kassapa prison.
The centre includes a dormitory and classroom, bathrooms and toilets as well as a dispensary and a football pitch.
The idea is to give the shegues - the name is apparently a corruption of the name of guerrilla fighter Che Guevara - a better life than their previous precarious existence on the streets.
"We are tackling the security problems on the streets of Lubumbashi," said Kalunga Mawazo, the political adviser to the provincial interior minister.
"The presence of the children on the streets has caused untold damage. They have been responsible for numerous fires in the city centre, thefts and rapes."
He said the operation to clear the streets meant people now felt much safer and the children appreciated being taken into care, "The children have expressed their gratitude for what we have done. That is proof enough that they were tired of the lives they lived on the street."
However, two months after the operation started, a few of the children have escaped to resume their former lives. That has led the authorities to declare that any escapees who are recaptured will be dispatched to the country to work in the fields.
A member of the congregation at the Roman Catholic cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, Patient Abedi, said, "These kids hassle us when we leave mass every Sunday and demand money."
Non-governmental organisation BUMI, which has looked after street children since 1992, says the provincial authorities have done the right thing.
"I support the action of the provincial government in living up to its responsibilities by supervising the children that it finds on the street," said Thérèse Ilunga, chair of BUMI. "It is not normal to let children aged two or three roam the streets."
However, she said the government should not just be rounding the children up but also returning them to their families.
She also urged the authorities to go beyond feeding and training the children to look after their mental well-being, "Some of them have been chased away by their parents and are traumatised."
Officials say parents often make accusations against their children of witchcraft when turning them out onto the streets but they believe in most cases the reasons are economic.
"Parents are responsible for their children and a family should not end up on the street. Children's place is in the home with the parents. If parents do not understand that this is a place that abides by the law, they should be brought before the court to answer for abandoning their children, which is a serious crime," Ilunga said.
Rodrigue Katulu, a children's welfare activist, agreed that parents should be dealt with according to the law and efforts should be made to reunite children with their families.
"What they should be doing in the training centre is to identify the children in order to track down their parents. Where the parents are found, they should be punished according to the law," he said.
Katulu said parents found guilty of abandoning children could be fined or imprisoned for up to five years.
Meanwhile, in an effort to improve the long-term prospects of Shegues, the governor of Katanga, Moïse Katumbi, decided this month to provide jobs for those 18 or over. They will form a 100-strong cleaning team and have each been given 100 US dollars in advance so that they can find somewhere to live.
But he warned that if any of the new recruits ended up back on the street, they would all lose their jobs.
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