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Life experiences of the children living on streets

Alyshah Abdul Sultan

“I am Javeed Iqbal, killer of 100 children, I hate this world. I have no regrets. I killed 100 children. I am ready to die”. These were the last words of a man who on March 16, 2000 was found guilty for brutally murdering 100 children in Lahore.( McCarthy, 2000). This horrific incident opened the eyes of many humanitarian groups towards the disregarded street children of Pakistan. Although many of the governmental as well as non governmental organization took their course towards the working for street children of Pakistan after this incident, the question of why there were still so many children on the street remains unaddressed. If you have ever had the opportunity of passing through empress market sadder in Karachi, you can see many of these children either found in the dump collecting garbage, begging, found sitting outside a restaurant or just lying on the street. During my entire year of school and college, I have been exposed to these scenarios and it made me wonder how do these children survive on the streets? Although there are number of studies done on these children by different NGOs, to my knowledge very few of them discuss about their life experiences on street (expect for few newspapers). One morning while having breakfast at a restaurant with my friend in sadder, I was able to invite five of these children at the table to join me. I asked them few questions about their experiences on the street with their verbal consent. From this half an hour interaction I came to know that all of these children were from Afghanistan who had entered Pakistan illegally for job opportunities. Few had their homes and families here, while others were all alone and had no home here or contact with their families in Afghanistan. All of the children were involved in garbage collection and generated an income of Rs 200 to 300 per day. While sharing their typical day one of the 16 year old child responded that “I wake up at 6 in the morning, collect garbage the whole day and as I don’t have a family so at night I sleep in a park. It is dark and quite there so I get a peaceful sleep” Form this statement we can imagine what peaceful to them means, while ignoring the fact that they are at they are at a high risk in coming across police, criminals and drug addicts. One of the child said that he sleeps in a factory’s ware house where he is at the mercy of his employer while others go back to their families after a hard working day. According to a research done by Azad foundation (2005) 57% of the children sleep on the footpath, 33% in parks, 55% at mazars and 4% at their work places. While responding to my question regarding food one of the child stated that “We sit outside a restaurant. Normally we have to wait one to two hours for some to buy us food. Sometimes we also eat the food people dump in the garbage”. These sorts of food make them more vulnerable to infections. Studies have shown that majority of these children suffer form gastrointestinal problems followed by respiratory tract infections. Some of the street children I interviewed were also involved in substance abuse including cigarette smoking and the use of charas. One of the responded stated that “After a hard day of working I go my friends, light up a cigarette filled with charas and make my problems go away” In the light of this statement we can say that some of these children have taken up substance abuse as part of their mal adapted coping mechanism, further more peer pressure also plays a dominant role in these habits. Lastly, I was able to ask them about the problems faced by them. One of the major problems faced by these children can be highlighted by the following statement. “The biggest problem that we face is of police, they always ask us for nationality cards which we don’t have thus taking away what ever money we have earned during the day. Further more they also beat us and sometimes transport us far away to an unknown location”. Street children face many problems in regard to health, social issues, housing situation and living on street. This issue is not something which has emerged recently. It is the reality which every one is aware about. Although Azad foundation is working hard for improving the status of these children but in a malfunctioning society like Pakistan a single organization is not enough to undo the corruption. It is necessary that multiple organizations work hand in hand for bringing up the status of these children.