The government has finally agreed to host a multi-sector national dialogue on street kids in the first quarter of 2022 and is currently developing a draft concept note on formulating collective efforts to address the street children program.
According to a letter, dated January 3rd, 2022 signed by the ministry of community development and social services permanent secretary Beatrice Darko and to beautiful gates foundation who requested a national indaba and for a marathon walk from Kitwe to Lusaka to raise awareness on street children, the national planning meeting for street kids will be held within the first 3 months of this year.
In the letter, the permanent secretary has guided the pro-street kids’ organization to liaise with the director – child development at her ministry to coordinate dates for the marathon walk from Kitwe to Lusaka and for the minister of community development and social services Doreen Mwamba to receive the petition.
And Beautiful Gates Foundation executive director Bill Kapinga, who has confirmed receiving the letter is gratified that the new dawn government has finally responded positively to requests of a national indaba on street kids after over 15 years of petitioning for the same without any success.
Several attempts by successive governments to remove street kids and place them in foster homes or skill’s training facilities such as the Zambia national service have evidently yielded little to no results as their number keep increasing with no tangible progress made to address the matter despite calls for a national indaba to formulate proper and workable structures.
Fat lady, I am sure you have less privileged relatives. Just go out there and bring them under your roof,. If each one us does, the problem will be solved. That Indaba is a cost in form accommodation, upkeep and allowances.
Action required not talking. Too much talking in Zambia. It is now an ” industry”. The talking ” industry”
It’ll be a waste of time. We know the causes. High unemployment means that even the traditional African social security system in the extended family cannot cope. I would advise the Minister of Community Development to commission an inter-disciplinary team to study the problem and report to her.
Disappointing, why always dialogue over straight forward things?
“We have challenges with our toilets, they don’t have water” .
Solution, dialogue.
“Our farmland has some bushes growing and we can’t plant, we need to cut the trees”
Solution, dialogue
“Our children are roaming the streets, they don’t go to school and their parents are poor”
Solution, dialogue. Oh wait, and also a walk around the two biggest cities to ‘raise awareness’.
The problem that the UPND are facing is that they want to look clever than those before them, as such they’re wasting time either looking for info that is already available or on blame games. Douglas Syakalima is busy advocating for a cutoff point for grade 7. About 450,000 learners sat for grade 7 exams, if he introduces his cutoff point it’s likely that half of that amount will not make it to grade 8. It’s not possible that all 225,000 grade 7 failures will find space to repeat. This means that every year around 150,000 or more children aged between 12 and 14 will be offloaded on to the streets and that will worsen the street kids problem. The reason the MMD introduced basic schools was to retain kids in school long enough until they’re at least 16yrs old
The idea of basic schools was to give children basic education before they’re offloaded. Skills like woodwork, carpentry & joinery, bricklaying, baking, horticulture, automotive mechanics, driving, poultry, knitting & weaving, tailoring, domestic electrical wiring, metal fabrication etc must be taught at junior and senior secondary education. Not all kids on the streets are orphans, some are victims of circumstances. The UPND will do better to improve on this policy than to do away with it. So they must learn to have a coordinated approach to issues of national importance. Let them also learn from those that have been there before. That’s why we condemned the senseless wholesale dismissal of technocrats. Bring back Jobbicks Kalumba he’ll guide you
A walk is a sheer waste of time, it wont have any impact on the solution apart from fartening the pockets of the organisers. Like Nemwine (#3) has suggested, what can be more effective is forming an inter-disciplinary team to study the problem and then put up recommendations that the New Dawn can follow. The inter-displinery team could have members from the Sports, Agriculture, Education, Social, Religious, Universities and even the Defence sectors. After all, a lot of academic papers at both the masters and PhD levels have been written about Street Kids in Zambia and solutions found therein. But there has been no follow-up or coodinated efforts to make sure that these studies are put to practical use at the grassroot level, they have remained on the shelves of universities and government…
When you hold a National indaba, you are bringing the knowledge and wisdom of several people together to solve a common problem. This must be commended and encouraged to go ahead. Times change and problems are dynamic, you cannot rely on a research done by a PHD student some time back as the basis to solve a problem today which may have changed the dynamics.