The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Four victims of child prostitution have been rescued by Kampala Capital City Authority-KCCA.
The victims from Rukungiri and Iganga were handed over to KCCA by well-wishers.
According to the KCCA Director of Gender and Community Services and Production Harriet Mudondo, the girls worked at a bar in Kireka that was closed following the presidential directives on the closure of bars.
She however says that they have failed to trace the people who were employing the girls who are between 15 and 17 years.
The girls were taken to Nakivubo Blue Primary School where other street children are currently being quarantined.
Mudondo says while the girls will be rehabilitated and counselled by professional counsellors.
According to Mudondo, over 60% of the children want to be reunited with their families, 30 percent want to go for vocational education while the rest say they want to remain on streets.
There are over 170 children already sheltered out of the 200 that KCCA says they can accommodate at the school. The children sleep in classes, 15 in each to observe social distancing.
Kampala Central Division Mayor Charles Sserunjogi says that the objective is to protect the children from the streets that could expose them to COVID-19.
KCCA has a team of social workers from a number of KCCA partner organisations like Uganda Youth Development Link and Shule Foundation among others that are working to manage these children and teach good practices to the children while at the school.
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The local authorities have a role to play especially in combating child abuse in prostitution as well as child trafficking, because these guys live directly in our communities and its not hard job to tap into their operations.
All LC chairmen understand bar owners and can work with ISO ( internal security organization) to tap into operations of child abuse and those in human trafficking.
The local authorities have a role to play especially in combatting child prostitution .
Chairmen of LCS and Internal security officers understand these operations very well because they happen in their immediate communities.
An offenders are usually citizens living in these communities.
The need for us to look seriously at the issue of care especially for the girl child must be stressed again, infact the number of student in their early teens dropping out school because of the inability of the parent to continue paying the school fees is overwhelming. If we as Africans can find a way of helping the girl child through teens into a state of self dependent; we shall witness a great dividend from this and we shall a transformation of our nation and continent. Social security package to take care of our girls will go a long way.
God bless Uganda, God bless Africa.