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Survey on Child Beggars

'Children drugged to sleep'

Staff correspondent
Sometimes at the traffic signals, some women are seen begging with sleeping children in their laps. But they do not wake to the blaring horns of passing cars and buses or even to rain or scorching heat.
Now it is known that these children are drugged to make them sleep for long, which is detrimental to their physical and mental growth, said speakers at a press conference yesterday.
Wahida Banu, chairperson of the Forum and convener of Projonmo Bachao, presented the keynote paper at the press conference organised by Bangladesh Shishu Odhikar Forum and Projonmo Bachao at the National Press Club.
The results of a survey on child beggars were presented at the programme. The survey was conducted at six points of the city in October last year.
These points are Farmgate and its adjacent areas, High Court and its adjacent areas, Bijoy Sarani and its adjacent areas, Mouchak-Malibagh
and its adjacent areas, Gulshan and its adjacent areas and Nilkhet and its adjacent areas.
A total of 751 children, including 462 boys and 289 girls, were interviewed during the survey.
"Through the interviews, we tried to know what is the best way to help them," said Altaf Hossain Selim, programme coordinator, Aparajeyo Bangladesh.
Fifty percent of the children came from Barisal, Mymensingh. Faridpur, Bhola, Comilla and Jamalpur and the other are from other parts of the country.
Most of them put up in slums, footpaths, launch terminal, rail stations, bus stations or verandas of dwelling places at night. Fifty-one percent of the children stay with their parents and the others beg alone.
Local hoodlums often take away their money.
Asked what they would do if begging is banned, 35 percent of children prefer to stay at shelter home, 33 percent at drop-in centres, 13 percent at
their own home, 6 percent prefer to do their own business and 2 percent want to study with the government assistance.
Asked what they can do to help child beggars if begging is banned for them, 32 percent adult beggars said they would send their children to school, 27 percent would stop children begging, 19 percent would employ their children in small enterprises, 17 percent would send their children to food-for-education programme, 15 percent would assist the government in this job, 9 percent would do nothing and 3 percent would send their children to vocational training centres.
Md Kofiluddin, director of the Forum; Mahbubul Haque, secretary general, Habitat Council Bangladesh; Kazi Enayet Hossain, executive member of the Forum; Shamim F Karim, Department of Psychology, Dhaka University; and Maolana Abul Kalam Azad, chairperson, Mosque Council Dhaka, spoke at the seminar.