Plot to dump street kids in youth training camps
Plot to dump street kids in youth training camps
The Financial GazetteStaff Reporter
11/25/2004 7:18:10 AM (GMT +2)
THE Harare City Council is planning to dump more than 7 000 street kids at the controversial national youth training centres in a sweep likely to be replicated in other towns and cities.
Plans are already at an advanced stage to forcibly round up beggars and a hardened army of street children, starting in the capital Harare, as the government battles to stem the spiralling population of street people, sources said.
The plans, according to the same sources, are also meant to give impetus to the government’s controversial national youth training programme, widely seen as a ruse to establish ZANU PF’s hold on young people.
It has been established that the government, which held a meeting recently with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working on the rights of children in Zimbabwe, has given the same NGOs three months to conceive a workable plan to deal with the street kids menace.
“If the NGOs fail, then government will proceed with its initial plan of sending these street dwellers to the training camps. This is seen as the only solution to restoring normalcy to the streets of Harare and other towns,” the sources said.
The move to dump street kids in the “propaganda” camps comes at a time the government is making serious plans to expand the existing training centres to all of the country’s provinces.
The youth training camps have come under attack for brainwashing unemployed youths who are allegedly used by the ruling ZANU PF to terrorise citizens during election periods. The government denies the charge, saying students at the camps get lessons on patriotism.
Graduands from the camps, derisively referred to by some Zimbabweans as “Green Bombers”, have been accused of a string of human rights violations, including beatings, torture and rape, charges denied by the government and ruling party.
Harare City Council spokesperson Leslie Gwindi professed ignorance on the intended move to dump street kids from Harare in training camps.
At the meeting held two weeks ago between government officials and representatives from the Zimbabwe National Council for the Welfare of Children, the government made it clear that it was now taking steps to “round up street kids and place them in places of safety”.
The government’s suspicious proposal, which was immediately rejected by representatives from NGOs at the meeting, is that street dwellers be placed in “residential care institutions”.
Matters came to a head when the NGO representatives demanded to know “whether they (the government) have the capacity to house more than 12 000 people.
“Our bone of contention was also on the fact that institutionalisation is not the best way forward in dealing with the problem. After they are institutionalised, they are likely to return to the streets,” said Trynos Masengwe, a representative of the National Council for the Welfare of Children.
