BY Memory Khutuliwa

Blantyre, June 3, Mana: Blantyre District Social Welfare Office has said limited access to health care, homelessness; poverty and family breakdown are major factors that drive mothers and children into streets in the cities and other urban areas. 

Blantyre District Social Welfare Officer, Ireen Lakuzala said this in relation with increased street connected mothers and children amidst current cold weather condition and other social challenges in the city.

She observed that street connected mothers were exposed to various life challenges such as social rejection and the mothers were mostly victims of sexual crimes.

 “We are implementing various interventions to address these challenges that street connected mothers and children face. One of the interventions is to unite or reintegrating them to their families,” she said.

Child Rights Activist, Amosi Chibwana said mothers who were born from street connected parents end up in the street where they face numerous challenges.

He observed that poverty, family breakdown, single parenthood are common factors leading to the influx of mothers and children on the city streets.

Chibwana added that children from street connected parents are deprived of their rights to education, health and right to play thereby affecting child growth, care, development and survival.

“Children who grow in the streets with their parents or sent by their parents to beg in the street lose their intellectual; social and emotion touch with their homes and community,” he said.

The Child Rights Activist said it becomes a challenge for foster parents, child care and reformatory facility to manage children who are raised in the street after moral decay takes up the course.

“Children who are raised in the streets are unable to access education because of the stereotypes and negative perceptions that the society has on them,” he said.

Chibwana disclosed that activists continue to advocate for the rights of children including street connected children for their social welfare, protection and justice on top of encouraging the children to go to care institutions for their best care.

“It is important that laws should be enforced on parents whose children are on the streets but this must do because the very same parents are required to provide care and support to their children,” he said.

Chibwana said reintegration, relocation and all interventions to tackle mothers and children street connectivity should be done in the best interest of the child as provided by the law.

He called on communities to put mechanism that should take full responsibility to raise children in their communities to become reliable citizens other than creating situations that could compel mothers and children to go into streets.

One of the street connected mothers in Limbe, Blantyre, and Matilda Jafali said she lives with her two children in the street because her husband left her when she was pregnant for her second born child.

“I left home when I was five months old pregnant for my second born child. My husband lied to me that he was going to look for greener pasture in Mozambique and I waited for moths until one day his friend told me that my husband married another wife,” she said.

Jafali added that the rejection put more suffering onto her and the two children such that she could not help it but to go way.

“I failed to feed my first child and to feed myself, I was in extremely poverty and had no peace of land to cultivate, I had no house and this is why am here,” the street connected mother added.

Jafali has four kids, two were born in the streets after a man raped after disguising himself as Good Samaritan who could offer her startup capital for business while another man came in to promise her marriage.