The Children’s Department in Narok County has warned residents against using children to beg in the streets for their own monetary benefit.
Addressing the media from his office on Monday, the Narok Children Officer, Pilot Khaemba lamented that cases of street children and beggars, most of who are children living with disability were increasing in major towns in the county.
He said the children are placed at strategic places where they can beg money from the public and at the end of the day their guardians take all the money from them.
“We have realised that there is a new formula of conning unsuspicious public of money. The children who look so desperate beg from the town dwellers who give them a lot of money only for their guardians to pick everything at the end of the day,” said Khaemba.
His sentiment comes after his office rescued a ten-year-old, physically challenged girl from the streets of Narok town.
The girl initially informed the officers that her parents hails from Tanzania and that she was begging for money to raise bus fare to go back home.
However, upon investigations, the children officer said the mother of the girl is a Kenyan by the name Joyce Njeri who even benefit from the Orphans Vulnerable Children Cash Transfer (OVC-CT) programme.
“We were shocked to realise that the mother of the child begging in the streets was benefiting from the vulnerable children cash transfer. Such a trend is unacceptable,” the children officer continued.
Khaemba said the girl was placed at one of the Charitable Children Institutions (CCI) in Narok town as investigations on the matter continue.
Cases of street children in Narok town has been going up with many children seen outside leading supermarkets like Tuskys and Naivas during evening hours begging from the residents.
Khaemba noted a probability of the street children being transported from other towns, saying most of their faces in Narok town were new.
He called on all children stakeholders to work in unity in a bid to eliminate children from the streets and instead ensure they were attending classes like their colleagues.
By Ann Salaton
