City faces alarming rise in addicts, juvenile beggars

KARACHI - Owing to the rampant unemployment of their parents due to off-fishing season, a number of fishermen’s children have started involving in begging and drug trafficking and this trend has resulted in a sharp rise in the number street children making their percentage up to 40 % in the metropolitan, said the President of Initiator Human Development Foundation (IHDF), Asif Rana Habib, while talking to The Nation here on Thursday.

Rana said the unavailability of any alternative profession has led the minor boys to earn their bread by begging during the off-fishing season.

He further revealed that condition of street children is worse that that of the refugees or prisoners in the country and there is no official record maintained by the government.

He added that most of the street children living in all of the sixty katchchi abadies, including Machchar Colony, Butta Colony, Bangali Para, Teen Hatty, Ibrahim Hydri, Hundred Quarters of Orangi Town, Bilal Colony and others. There are around hundred hotels in the city where such children are seen waiting for someone to provide them food, he said.

Rana strongly criticised the role of NGOs and said that there are fifteen centres set up for the rehabilitation of such children obtaining millions of rupees from the international donor agencies but they have failed to control the situation.