Street children in Nepal facing poor condition

Street children sleeping together with dogs in the tourist
neighborhood of Thamel, Kathmandu.
Photo: Ingmar Zahorsky / CHINAsia Update

KATHMANDU, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Street children in Nepal are seen sniffing glue and sleeping aimlessly in the street.

They are not more than 15 years of age who are always in a group or if not in the group they are found sleeping in the street.

The children mostly belong to the rural areas and they have runaway due to various domestic problems in the village.

The family problems, lack of education, food, security and moreover they ran away due to poverty to take shelter in the streets of the capital Kathmandu and other urban areas.

Talking to Xinhua on Tuesday, Tarak Dhital, Spokes- person of Child Workers in Nepal Concerned Center (CWIN), a private organization working for children’s rights, said there are 5,000 street children in Nepal basi- cally in urban area who are into glue sniffing. He said the main problem of children choosing street is being an orphan, no care in family, abandonment, rise in domestic violence, exploitation at work places, growing trend of migration in general are also leading children coming to streets.

Street children are very vulnerable to the exposure to alcohol, drugs and tobacco, he added.

Furthermore, sheltering in the streets they are not safe because they are into smoking cigarettes, sniffing glue or dendrite that intoxicates them. Most of them are ad- dicted to it and the addiction leads to them to do different crimes as well.

There are child care centers and organizations, however the children don’t want to stay there where they can’t sniff dendrite and smoke cigarettes or be in freedom like they have in the streets.

Dhital said they term it as “street addiction” where they find freedom from sex to drugs so they are addicted to street and once they are in street they rarely come back to the society.

Street children are among the high risk and insecure groups and they are vulnerable to various forms of exploitation and abuses. They do have negative impact over the society in every form.

CWIN has rehabilitated more than 6,000 children up to now and has even formed networks that is helping in reintegrating the children.

“It is really hard to bring those children back to normal, they have to be corrected and they have to be educated for their rehabilitation,” said Dhital.

Additionally, he said that different programs from the governmental level and the private level should be brought because the number of street children can be easily rehabilitated.

Editor: Lin Zhi