ZAMBOANGA CITY, 10 July 2006 — Street children and beggars are being rounded up in this key southern Philippine city in an effort to curb the growing number of mendicants, largely blamed for petty crimes.
Police said they have taken 53 mostly children since the crackdown began Friday. The children were handed over to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
“The campaign to the city streets of vagrants has been going on for many years already, but these children continue coming back,” Inspector Esperanza Santiago, chief of the women and children protection unit of the local police force, told reporters.
Police said the street children, if left unsupervised and unschooled, could become future criminals. Many street children are hooked into illegal drugs and some resort to robbery and snatching to sustain their vices.
Some of the children say they are just victims of circumstances beyond their control.
“Maybe some are into drugs, but not all of us are like that. We are forced into this kind of life because of poverty. We don’t even have food on the table and my parents have no jobs. People should have a pity on us and not condemn us,” Orlando Santiago, a 12-year-old beggar, said in Chabacano, the local tongue.
Local politicians call the street children and beggars an eyesore who bring bad publicity to the tourism industry in the city, but there are not enough social centers to house the mendicants and no development and rehabilitation programs to encourage them to go back to school.
Social welfare officials say some children have stopped going to school to sell scrap and help feed their poor family. But others, especially the younger girls and boys, are forced into prostitution. Just last week, local reports said at least 30 street children who were separately rounded up showed signs of sexually transmitted diseases.
Help comes seldom for street children in the city. In some instances politicians provided them porridge, not because they care about children's plight, but largely for publicity purposes. Politicians give more, especially at Christmas time, not to street children but to a few local organizations that take care of the elderly people and orphans.
“We have really nothing at all. We eat food that people throw away there in the garbage. I sometimes cry and ask God why I have to suffer like this, like why my family is poor and why nobody is helping us. I don’t know the answers,” said Felimon Cruz, 14, who had lived by begging and scavenging the past six years.
In Lumbangan village in the eastern coast where the city dump is located, many children also have abandoned school to dig for scrap and help feed their family. Children as young as two years old are now regular diggers in the dump, about 10 kilometers from the bustling city.
Rodel Cabayacruz, 13, has spent half of his lifetime in scavenging for scrap, be it paper, tin cans, or even rotten food.
“I come here every day and I don’t mind the stench. What is important to me is I bring a little money for my brother’s milk. We are so poor that my mother cannot even send me to school,” he said.
Unlike in the city center where street children are being cared for by the social welfare office, the future for those in the garbage dump is much bleaker.
There are no sustainable livelihood programs for families in the dump and the children are often sick. Worse, no politician is known to have visited the area, even for publicity purposes.
