Street children speak of dreadful nights

All a 15-year-old boy wanted was a place in Karwan Bazar in the capital where he could have some warmth at night.

Md Naim made this request when he was asked to say something at an opinion-sharing meeting on rehabilitation of street children yesterday.

His job is to load and unload papaya from trucks from 9:00pm till 6:00am three nights a week. During the day, he stays at Aparajeya Bangladesh's drop-in centre in Karwan Bazar. Street children can eat, sleep, shower, study or just relax at the centre. The centre is closed at night.

"We sleep on the ground floor of a red building. Sometimes we sleep on top of empty delivery trucks. There are about 40 of us who do not have a place to sleep at night," he said, adding, "Many of us are small children and it becomes difficult to sleep under one blanket in winter."

At the meeting in the Family Planning Directorate office in the capital, State Minister for Women and Children Affairs Ministry Meher Afroze Chumki said, "Let us make sure that not a single child has to sleep out in the open at night in 2016."   

Multi-Sectoral Programme on Violence against Women of the ministry and the social welfare ministry organised the programme to discuss rehabilitation strategies with NGOs and development partners.

Nasima Begum, secretary to the women and children affairs ministry, said after the prime minister's announcement in October that no child should live on the streets, two committees under the two Dhaka city corporations were formed to rehabilitate street children of two wards.

Project director of the programme on violence against women, Abul Hossain, also head of the committee under Dhaka North, presented results of a survey carried out in 36 wards of Dhaka North this October and November.

A total of 317 children -- 232 boys and 85 girls -- were interviewed. About 70 percent of the respondents were between six and 10 years, 13.56 between 11 and 15, 12.93 under five and 3.16 percent were between 16 and 18 years. About 70 percent said they want rehabilitation and the rest fear shelters as they feel that their movement would be restricted, said Abul. NGO representatives present at the meeting urged the government to create a database of street children and of NGO's resources and work areas and come up with short and long-term rehabilitation plans.