Paragraph Writing
Street Children/Tokai
The children who live in the street are called street children. Street children are familiar figure in our country. The street children or the tokais are he abandoned children of their parents. Street children live a very miserable life. They do not have any particular residence. They do not get any proper food or health care like the familial ones. They pass the whole day wandering here and there in search of food. They can not get a square meal a day. Many of them work as child labours while others works as garbage collectors, porters and rickshaw pullers. Sometimes they are found sleeping in the market places at night. They do not get a square meal a day let alone any education or health care. Street children are a major problem of our country specially in our towns. They commits various crimes like stealing, mugging, pick pocketing etc. Everybody should come forward to resolve this problem. The rich people can help these rootless children with food, healthcare and abode. The government can take steps to train these children with some vocational and practical hand skills to engage themselves in jobs. Thus the street children should be given scopes to come out of their miserable and inhuman lives. Street Children/Tokai Street children, often referred to as "tokais," are a familiar sight in our country. These are children who live on the streets and have been abandoned by their parents. Their lives are incredibly challenging and filled with misery. Unlike most children, they lack a stable residence and access to proper food and healthcare. Street children spend their days wandering aimlessly in search of food, and many of them are unable to secure a square meal each day. Some of them are forced to work as child laborers, while others take on jobs like collecting garbage, working as porters, or pulling rickshaws. At night, they can sometimes be found sleeping in marketplaces.Sadly, these children not only lack basic necessities like food, education, and healthcare, but they are also exposed to various dangers. Many resort to criminal activities such as stealing, mugging, and pickpocketing to survive.Addressing the issue of street children is a significant challenge in our country, particularly in urban areas. To tackle this problem, it requires collective efforts. Wealthy individuals can contribute by providing food, healthcare, and shelter to these vulnerable children. The government should take steps to provide them with vocational training and practical skills to help them secure jobs and lead better lives.It is crucial that we offer these street children opportunities to escape their harsh and inhumane circumstances. By working together, we can help them build brighter futures and break the cycle of poverty and hardship.
Model Answer-2
Model Answer-3
Composition / Essay Writing
THE CONDITION OF THE STREET CHILDREN
IN BANGLADESH
Street and working children:
The street children in Bangladesh are those who earn their living off the city streets and stay there for most or all of the day. They may or may not have parents or legal guardians. The street is their home where they eat, sleep, make friends, work and play. The lives of most street children are characterised by unstable emotional relationships with negative self-image, social stigma, violence and exploitation. These children are almost always ill fed. Some survive on barely one meal a day; others get by on litter from restaurants or by scavenging municipality dustbins.
The working children are those between ages of 7 and 15 who generally work as domestic servants in private homes, in factories, small shops and restaurants. They work in the informal sector as scavengers, shoeshine boys and porters. There is nothing in the home of a street child that is appealing to him. Hence, he prefers to be away from his home which is over crowded, squalid and unhealthy.
The street and working children are a neglected group in Bangladesh society. They are seen as part of the floating population and are not included in the National Population Census. Whereas about 400,000 under the age of 15 work in the urban areas of Bangladesh, making up 12 per cent of the urban labour force. At present, about 50,000 children are employed in the garment sector. For many poor families the income that a child brings in is the only hope for survival.
The Girl Children on the street:
Although the vast majority of the street children are boys, there are a large number of girls as well. The girls leave home for the same reasons and some are probably abandoned by their families. If street life is hard for boys, it is even harder for girls, who additionally suffer abuse and sexual exploitation.
Once a girl is forced into prostitution, she can never return to her normal family life. In order to get away from the street, girls frequently take up employment as domestic helps. Unfortunately even there they are likely to become victims of violence and sexual abuse.
Domestic service is one of the major sectors of employment open to the urban poor, especially women and children. Maltreatment of these young children by family members (particularly the home mistress) is common. The child domestics usually suffer in silence for fear of losing the job. There is no legislation till now to protect these children.
Recent surveys have revealed that nearly 300,000 children, aged between 7 to 16 years, are on the streets in urban centres all across Bangladesh. In terms of tomorrow this projects a large generation of citizenry of the underprivileged class, who may be denied the childhood opportunities which are the inherent right of all children in a democratic society. To say that society can hardly afford to offer them even the basic necessities like food and shelter, to say nothing of education and vocational training means we are setting the fuse to a time bomb for posterity.
Most of these children on the streets are those abandoned by parents or guardians or are simply runaways from broken homes fleeing violence or sexual abuse. Here on the streets the homeless children, with or without parents or families, are subject not only to the ravages of nature but also to the deprivations of humans in the form of the brutality meted out by some members of the polices as well as the regular prosecution of hoodlums who later secure their recruits from among the boys. An enormous tragedy is that as many street children (especially girls) are victimised as sex workers, they fall prey to sexually transmitted diseases. In fact, almost all of them are subject to some form or other of STDs with syphilis, as is the global phenomena, accounting for nearly half the STD cases.
Where despair and frustration reign, the use of drugs is no surprise. And it is figured that more than a quarter of the total sex workers use syringes to inject the drug. The number of children on the streets represents a huge loss in a potential manpower to the nation. If they can be converted into a useful workforce, it will be of great value to the economy. Moreover, if the children are turned to worthy citizens, the number of possible criminals can be reduced.
Living on the streets children, whether at day or night, is at such hazards as at creeping, penetrating dust, the soot from exhausts and the heat of the sun. Slum quarters are avoided as these are frequently overcrowded and squalid. Services like water and sanitary facilities are worse in such settlements in terms of accessibility than on the streets. Most of the children work on the streets as long the daylight lasts and sometimes even beyond. Their work places range from commercial centres like officers and banks to busy zones like traffic intersections as well as bus and launch terminals, train stations and airports.
They serve as porters in bazars, scavengers or ‘tokais’, shoeshine boys, break bricks, sell newspapers or flowers or candies or cigarettes, wash plates in restaurants, clean cars or watch over them. A grim irony is that in many cases the family is dependent on such minor bread earners as the father is disabled, the mother chronically sick. It has been found that nearly half of the child workers earn about Taka 500 a month or thereabouts which appears to be sufficient to provide the bread earners perceived nutritional needs as well as that of another person. It has also been found that a quarter of the families on the street depend entirely on the child workers in the family as the parents do not work.
Circumstances lead the Children to Street:
Where have these street children come from? Why is the phenomenon of homeless youth a growing social problem? The answers are complex. Economic problems do not explain everything. Our society is experiencing a breakdown of traditional pattern of community life, which has led to a massive migration to the towns. The new migrants find homes in urban shanty towns where poverty, together with unemployment or underemployment further weakens family bonds and the fabric of society.
Quarrels and domestic violence enmesh the family atmosphere with debilitating tension, highly damaging to the psyche of the child and ultimately to the child’s physical well being. Studies have revealed that on an average the size of a family comes to about six members from toddlers to adult. So the pressure to earn or manage enough to fulfil even the barest minimal requirement for all the family members is agonisingly tremendous. What is most heart-rending is that the work where income is steady is that related to crime and sex. So naturally, even though disinclination is generally pronounced, children find themselves becoming the woeful victims of circumstances.
If the problem is to be solved, one has to strike at the roots. Such families and children are the result of urban overpopulation, the escalation of landless families from prolonged droughts, river erosion, floods, cyclones and similar calamities, man-made and natural. Polygamy, abandonment of the wife (one out of five families are estimated to be five families are estimated to be headed by the mother) all lead to children being on the streets in urban zones. Migration from the rural countryside to the urban areas is also triggered by lack of suitable unskilled job. Besides, the inability of the rural economic infrastructure to absorb such unskilled labour is difficult. In other words, it is grinding poverty which sends children to the streets.
When parents separate, the children get dispersed too, or, as the single parent is too busy working, the children cannot receive the needed parental care and counsel. Then again, there are cases when the parent / parents have remarried and the step-parent is not sympathetic and accommodating to the children from the other marriage.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child:
The Convention on the Rights of the Child was unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in November 1989 and became part of International Law in September 1990. It is considered to be the most widely accepted human rights treaty in history, that has been ratified by 187 of the 193 member countries of the UN. Bangladesh was one of the first countries both to sign and ratify the
Convention. The Convention’s 54 articles seek to ensure the wellbeing of all children and to protect them against all forms of exploitation, discrimination, neglect and abuse. The rights recognised in the Convention cover many areas including health, education, relation between children and parents, cultural activities, civil rights, exploitation of children and children in conflict with the law.
The Convention defines a child as ‘every person under the age of 18 years’. The rights contained in the Convention are generally categorised into four clusters.
These are: Survival Rights, Development Rights, Protection Rights, and Participation Rights. The Convention contains four key principles which are of the utmost importance in interpreting and applying its provisions.
These are:
1) Non -discrimination: All children are entitled to enjoy the rights set out in the Convention without discrimination on the grounds of gender, economic status, religion, language, ethnic origin, colour, disability or birth.
2) The Best Interests of the Child: Parents, parliament, the courts and order relevant authorities must be guided by the best interests of the child or children concerned in any action relating to children.
3) Parent’s Responsibilities in Upholding Children’s Rights: Parents have a responsibility to give appropriate guidance to their children about exercising their rights under the Convention.
4) Respect for Views of the Child: Children who are old enough to form their own views have the right to express them freely in all matters affecting them. The principle applies to all kinds of informal everyday decisions taken at home and at school.
The 1990 World Summit for Children resulted in a Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children. The Declaration, together with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, set an Agenda for securing the well being of children by the year 2000. However, for the majority of Bangladesh’s street working children, the Declaration (1990 World Summit for Children) and the Convention (CRC) remain a mere theory, far removed from the reality of their rights. Almost 80 percent of our children are chronically malnourished and sick. The infant mortality rate is still very high. Neither the state nor the family has been able to provide legal protection for the 400,000 children who work in the urban areas of Bangladesh.
Government’s Response:
No society could have any goal more important than to take care of its children, to educate them and provide for their future, and to take pains to form them into healthy citizens. Yet, the problems of coping with our street children are mainly left to the religious organisations, NGOs or other charitable institutions. However, the Government of Bangladesh has taken certain steps to improve the situation of urban children who are destitute orphaned or without shelter.
Community’s Response:
Recently, service oriented projects such is free school, medical and nutrition programmes exist in urban slum areas. Some NGOs and church-based organisations have been running programmes including shelters, dropping off centres, and mobile vocational training centres for street children.
Why importance should be given on this sector:
The negative attitude which the street environment generates can be a source of enormous resentment among the children over the course of time, if little or no help gets to them. Hurt as children by an uncaring society, these enormous mass of children, especially when on the threshold of adolescence take it as natural to hand out a similar harsh treatment to society.
Solutions must be found for the sake of the children and for the sake of society. To solve these problems, governments must take the lead and at the same time give support to NGOs, community-based organisation and others involved with the rehabilitation of street children. Improving the housing facilities could make a major contribution to the living conditions so that families and their children could have hope for a better tomorrow. Development is dependent on the physical and mental health of people. People who sleep on the streets or who live in unhygienic and overcrowded homes cannot fully develop emotionally, intellectually, economically, culturally or as a family. A family that is self-sustaining with food, shelter and routine health care assured has no need for the children to be out on the street. Programmes should be devoted also to provide the parents themselves with jobs or income-generating sources or activities. In fact, inadequate and insecure shelter can lead to social and political instability, which eventually hampers economic development. The right to shelter and education for our street children must, therefore, be seen as a public policy priority issue, and adequate financial, physical, institutional and human resources must be allocated.
Education is a priority. The street children need to be literate. Next, they have to be able to make a living. This means imparting some form of vocational training or skills training.
On the whole it is important that we give serious attention to the increasing number of street children and do our best to find a satisfactory solution to the problems.