By Obbo Yusuf
In abide to fight child labor, police in Iganga distict has arrest over 20 street vending children as a trap to trace parents who expose them to criminality and harmful employment.
In an operation led by the Iganga district police commander Karekyezi Martin and the child protection offices in Iganga they arrested over 20 children who were selling masks, vegetables, roasted maize, tomatoes, sweet bananas among others.
DPC Iganga Karekyekezi Martin emphasized that child labor is an offense and a violation of children’s rights thus the arrest of them will help police to arrest parents and everyone behind the illegal acts and charge them accordingly as well.
In 2018 the Uganda Bureau of statistics and the ministry of Gender, labor and social development carried out enumeration of children on streets in Uganda in four districts of Iganga, Kampala, jinja and mbale which indicated that a total of 15000 children spend their life and sleep on streets in the same cities while 2,600 children work on the streets during day and return to their homes.
In the same way, Grace kaziba a Children’s rights defender in Iganga expressed concerns over parents failure to carryout their responsibilities and shifting the burden to children hence risking the children’s lives and violating their rights as per children’s Act and the Constitution of Uganda
Most of the parents involving young children into child labor attributed their acts to the biting poverty.
