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CHILDREN IN KENYA
Free schooling — Good, but not enough
By any measure, the enrolment of over a million extra
children in Kenya's primary school system over the past two years is a
success story. Enrolment figures in the East African country burgeoned
after President Mwai Kibaki introduced free primary education in 2003,
when he took over as head of state from Daniel arap Moi. One group of
children has little to cheer about in this regard, however, namely child
workers. Rights activists warn that government will have to couple its
policy of free primary schooling with laws making education compulsory
if these children are to be brought in from the cold. “About 1.9 million
(children) of ages five to 17 have not yet been able to access free
primary education because they are busy working,” Margaret Basigwa, head
of the National Council for Children's Services (NCCS) told IPS in
Kenya's capital, Nairobi. The NCCS is a government body that coordinates
the activities of all children's organisations in Kenya. The Central
Bureau of Statistics estimates that 17.5 percent of the 1.9 million
children are employed as domestics. Many of these persons are said to
endure abuse. In the case of girls this frequently takes the form of
sexual molestation by men in the household. Ironically, this may earn
female servants the wrath of wives.
“In many cases, the wife will even scald the girl to
disfigure her thoroughly on the assumption that she wants to snatch the
woman's husband,” Mwirigi Bikuri, manager of the child labour programme
at the African Network for the Prevention and Protection against Child
Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN), said in an interview with IPS. “The men
will on the other hand demand sex from the house-girls when the wives
have gone to work. The men will even pretend to have forgotten phones in
the house and go back after their wives have left and have sex with
these girls,” he added. In country where more than two million of the
approximately 30-million-strong population are HIV-positive, this
behaviour puts many young girls at risk of contracting AIDS. In
addition, children employed as domestic servants are often overworked
and denied food. Thirteen-year-old Caroline Ajuma's day begins at 04.30,
for example; she works in a home in Komarock estate on the outskirts of
Nairobi. “I start by fetching water warming bathing water for the wife,
husband, their two school-going children and three-month-old baby. I
follow with preparing breakfast and special food for the infant before
escorting the two older children to school,” she told IPS. When Ajuma
returns, she has her breakfast — then cleans dishes and cares for the
baby. At 16.00, it's time to collect the other two children from school.
“I have to prepare dinner as I ensure that the back-from-school children
have done their homework; then put the infant to sleep. I clean up (and)
iron clothes for the next day. By the time I retire to bed, it is 12 (at
night),” said Ajuma, who claims to have been beaten by her employer for
waking up late. As payment for adhering to a schedule which leaves
little room for her own schooling, Ajuma receives 6.25 dollars a month.
This money is sent to her grandmother, whom Ajuma says takes care of her
five siblings. Their parents died from AIDS-related illnesses about five
years ago.
The damage wrought by HIV and poverty goes to the
heart of what drives children like Ajuma into employment. “More than a
half of the children in Kenya, that is 8.6 million out of a total of 16
million live below the poverty line. In such circumstances, parents
force their children into working, including in the domestic sector to
supplement family income,” Basigwa says. “HIV/AIDS, which has orphaned
many children and given rise to child-headed households, is also to
blame,” she adds. The employment of children as domestics reportedly
occurs in both rural and urban areas. There are concerns that agents who
recruit children for domestic service sometimes sell them into
prostitution — or into situations of slave labour, where the children
are obliged to work for free. Bikuri has taken the government to task
over its efforts to combat abuse of child domestics, claiming that there
simply are not enough officials on the ground to solve problems. “For
example, the children crisis desk, it is only in Nairobi. We need these
services to be decentralised to the divisions and at the community level
where people can walk to report cases of child abuse,” he notes. The
crisis desk was set up in 2000, but has only one telephone line which
can be used to report cases of child abuse.
However, Basigwa dismisses this complaint. “Setting up
the crisis desk in itself exhibits keenness on the part of the
government. The government is short of resources but it is trying,” she
says. “It is time we stopped pointing an accusing finger at the
government. Kenyans themselves are responsible for employing under-age
children and abusing them against the law. Why doesn't the public do its
part of respecting the law?” A neighbour who fails to report a suspected
case of child abuse may be equally reluctant to report lack of school
attendance on the part of domestics. However, Bikuri maintains that
making education compulsory is a key part of efforts to cut down on the
employment of under-age children — and on abuse of child domestics. “In
the absence of policies and laws to address the issue of retaining
children in school and compelling parents and guardians to take children
to schools, we will not be able to solve the problem of child workers in
Kenya,” he notes.
Joyce Mulama
3 November 2004
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