Children's Advocate Mary Clarke is 'appealing to parents to be mindful of the protection of their children ... to hold their children in esteem'. - File

Dionne Rose, Staff Reporter

Children's Advocate Mary Clarke is urging parents to seek assistance from state-run welfare programmes, rather than allow their children to become labourers.

According to the findings of the National Survey of Street and Working Children (2002), 43 per cent of child labourers spend their income on the basic necessities of food and clothes, suggesting primarily a survival motivation for working. Just under a third give all or some of their earnings to their parents or other members of their family.

But the Children's Advocate is appealing to parents in need to seek help.

"We have social assistance programmes; they do not have to send their children on the streets to beg," she says. "I am appealing to parents to be mindful of the protection of their children ... to hold their children in esteem."

Children's activist Betty-Ann Blaine is concerned that there are a growing number of part-time children on the streets.

"What concerns me greatly is that we have a new, emerging category of what I call 'part-time' street children. These are children who are vending on the streets, either after school, late at nights or vending on weekends," says the convenor of Hearthe Children's Cry.

The national survey had also noted this. According to the document, child labour in Jamaica remains primarily a part-time activity, taking place outside of school hours, for the most part.

Children missing school alarming

Blaine says her organisation is alarmed that many of these children are missing school certain days of the week.

"We thought that we had moved well beyond that," she says. "There was a time when we had eradicated that, but we have gone right back and nowadays what we are having is children not going to school for the five days of the week."

Collette Roberts-Risden, project director of the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH), which also provides financial support for children who are unable to afford it, says there are no hard data to support Blaine's claim.

"I am not sure how much 'the no school on a Friday' concept still permeates in the society," she says.

Nevertheless, she joins Blaine in calling for an investigation by the Ministry of Education and Youth.

States Blaine: "So while the Ministry of Education boasts a high level of school enrolment, what we are having in the school is very poor attendance in many instances, a high level of truancy and children being out of school on suspension. The ministry needs to tell us how serious this problem is."

Minister of Health Horace Dalley who has portfolio responsibility for the protection of children, shares a different perspective on the matter.

" ... You see them in the days, you see them wiping car glass, you see them selling," he says. "And as I have said, I don't have any fundamental difficulty with that, given the nature of our society, and I understand the reality.

"Even though I am not encouraging children to go and sell to try to make a living, there is nothing I can do right now to stop them from making a living. What I intend to (ensure is that) they cannot be on the streets late at night," he adds.

Unit to police street at nights

In April, the HealthMinister announced that he would use retired police officers to keep the children off the streets at nights.

He tells The Sunday Gleaner this unit will be in place very soon. While declining to say how soon, he says he would be making further announcements about this unit during his contribution in the Sectoral Debate.

Blaine is recommending a multi-faceted approach to addressing the problem of children on the streets.

"We need the police to do their job, to enforce the law; we need a campaign to prevent it - speaking about good parenting," she states. "And we need the Ministry of Education to ensure that there is a cadre of social workers working along with the guidance counsellors who will look at individual cases of children who are not attending school."

She notes: "The person who is responsible for looking after the children first and foremost are parents, not the State."

According to the survey, more children enter into child labour of their own volition than are forced into it by economic destitution. The survey also noted that the motivation for the child taking such a decision is quite often the state of the household finances.

In addition, the survey says the State (i.e., the educational system, the conditions of children's homes, etc.), family crises, child abuse and peer pressure, in that order, can be considered the minor causes of child labour.

dionne.rose@gleanerjm.com