The Jakarta Post Thu, 05/24/2012
MAKASSAR: Social Affairs Minister Salim Segaf Al Jufri has expressed confidence that Indonesia would be free of street children by 2014.
He said that efforts had been intensifying over street children in several cities.
“By 2014, cities across Indonesia will be free of street children,” Salim told reporters after attending a disaster preparedness event in Makassar on Wednesday.
The term “street children” is used to refer to children who work and/or sleep on the streets. Another definition says it refers to any girl or boy who has not reached adulthood, for whom the street has become his or her habitual abode and/or source of livelihood and who is inadequately protected, supervised or directed by responsible adults.
Salim said that Indonesia was home to 230,000 children who were categorized as street children.
He said efforts to rid Indonesia of street children were being done, not by nabbing and locking them in homes, but by counselling, empowering and taking care of them with the aim of preventing them from returning to the streets.
In Makassar, the local administration forbids traffic users from giving food or money to children or beggars, a policy said to deter them from feeling settled on the street.
(so how is bung Salim proposing to do that? Export all the street kids as child-labour to the Middle East? siK.)
do 24 mei 2012 - 20:58