What became of street families rehab project?
By PAUL ORENGE
The media has on countless occasions been accused of spending far too much time punching holes into the government, and even more time reporting events that add little, if anything, to the nation’s development agenda. Are they guilty as judged? May be yes, may be no. But if you asked me, journalism is perhaps the most misunderstood of all professions. That is why, until very recently, a journalist in this country was treated with as much contempt as one would a beggar. If I have to clarify some issue here, the work of a journalist, as one journalist aptly summed it up in a television talk show recently, is like that of a prophet–observing the happenings around him or her, making value judgments about them and advising the establishment on the measures to take to avoid probable calamity.
Well, if we have not been doing that, then we deserve all the flak we can earn. Maybe I should paint for you a picture why journalists find it ever so easy to not just criticise, but go ahead to propose possible solutions to the problem in question.
Upon sweeping into office in 2003, the Narc government put in place what were considered robust measures to address the enduring problem of street families. Dubbed the Street Children Rehabilitation Programme (SFRP), the effort was to, among other things, clear the streets of the eyesore that the street families had become.
As a prelude to the effort, a Street Families Rehabilitation Fund (SFRTF) was created through Gazette Notice No. 1558 of 11 March under the Local Government Act. In the wake of the notice, an Advisory Mission was constituted and mandated to conduct a 10-day fact finding mission and develop a concept paper and facilitate the development of a draft action plan for a strategic approach to curb the street children problem.
One of the key recommendations made to the SFRTF by the advisory mission was the involvement of the stakeholders in the planning, implementation and monitoring process; from street children and families, to community bodies, NGOs, local authorities, the private sector, civil service heads and government ministries. Among the achievements the programme boast of today is having some of the former street children undergo the NYS training, and others acquire various vocational skills. And still more, the implementers of the project say in one of their progressive reports, is helping the youth who have attained adult age to acquire national identity cards and linked up with prospective employers. But in a country where there are no enough jobs to go around for even the most qualified of the workforce, one is at a loss as to whether to believe such claims.
But while some of the objectives have generally been implemented with a varying degree of success, at least as the implementers of the SFRP will have us believe, it is the attendant shortfalls that should interest any keen observer. Perhaps most troubling is that barely into its fourth year, the families we had been made to believe were to be cleared from the streets have since made a comeback. Those who have undertaken studies into provision of interventions as the Street Children Rehabilitation Programme set out to do say that the beneficiaries of the intended intervention have to be involved at every stage of the programme if it has to succeed. As to whether this has been the case in the implementation of the SFRP, your guess is as good as mine. And it is this very fact that has given rise to the argument that perhaps it would be better to prevent the conditions that push children, youth and families onto the streets, than wait until they are there to start finding ways of getting them out and later enabling them to lead acceptable lives. And to do this, there is need for those involved in the project to be more proactive rather than merely reactive.
For instance, we know that one of the reasons why some of these children whom we gladly tag as street urchins ended up in the street, is because of conflict in the families they originated from. What this means is that as long as families continue disintegrating due to disagreement between couples, more and more children will continue fleeing their homes to find refuge elsewhere. The bottom line here is that whatever the implementers of the SFRP do, let their strategies be geared towards prevention rather than intervention.
