By Allieu Sahid Tunkara
Adjacent to the Bank of Sierra Leone (BSL) complex, looking tired and famished under the burning afternoon sun, Immah Sankoh sits in a wheel chair, amid a row of physically challenged colleagues.
The woman makes a living by begging. She is given a helping hand by her nephew, Santigie Kargbo, who pushes her wheel chair to various locations within the city where she asks for alms. She says she makes between Le 10, 000 and Le 15, 000 a day.
Sankoh and Kargbo come from Makeni and they currently reside at Wilberforce Street in Freetown where they`ve spent almost two years. She spends the pitiable sum of money she gets on feeding. Yet her living standard is imperiled by the high cost of living in the city.
Santigie was attending the Alakram Islamic Secondary School in Makeni but stopped three years ago after attaining Senior Secondary School (SSS 2). He says he left school because he could no longer afford the fees.
“I dropped out of school because I had no money to pay school fees. I am ready to go back to school anytime I have someone to help,” he says, assuringly.
Immah and Santigie are not just related by blood, they also come from the same village. In Freetown, however, their relationship is a symbiotic one as they depend on each other for survival.
In return for spending the day pushing his aunt around Freetown, Santigie gets fed.
Congested verandas
The street of Freetown is littered with hundreds of their kinds. Young men and women, and in many cases under-aged kids, leaving their villages to serve as guide for disabled elderly men and women – blind, amputees, polio affected, etc – in Freetown and other urban centers.
Edward Mbayo became visually impaired four years ago. Prior to this, he attended the Koidu Secondary School (KSS) where he sat to the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE). He says he worked with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) as a field officer.
Mbayo relocated to Waterloo when he met his fate. He has a wife and two children to take care of. He wasn’t rich, he said, but he wasn’t poor either.
Today, he has been plunged into a different world as he goes begging in the streets assisted by his only child, Lansana Mbayo, aged 13. The young boy was in class 3 attending one of the primary schools at Waterloo, but is currently out of school because dad cannot pay his school fees.
“I make Le 10, 000 a day and, at times, less than that. I run my home out of this sum,” the father narrates to Politico, adding that all of the money is spent on feeding.
Standing beside Edward is another visually impaired man, Sahr Abu, who, like Edward, came to Waterloo from Kono to beg. Carpentry was Abu`s profession before he became blind. He now moves around begging with his nephew, Aiah Kamanda, aged 10, whom he described as his “bodyguard”.
“He is my bodyguard, and I am afraid of losing him,” he says.
At the Ecowas Street in the heart of the business district of the city, beggars can be seen lying in congested verandas. The filthy ditches around them produce unbearable stench, yet as helpless as these people are they are clearly oblivious of the consequences of the insanitary environment.
Among them is Isatu Kamara. She spends the day at the BSL complex.
Kamara is from Makeni and relocated to Freetown during the civil war. She says she has nothing left back home as she lost everything to the unrests.
Kamara had seven children, five of whom she lost to the civil war. None of her remaining children is in a position to help, thanks to Sierra Leone`s worrying unemployment problems.
“Most times, I earn Le 10, 000 and in difficult times I earn Le 5, 000 after begging the whole day, which is not enough to take care of my problems,” the middle aged woman tells Politico.
She says traveling between Freetown and Waterloo, where she has a home, was difficult and she was forced to spend the nights in the streets in Freetown.
Squalid condition
The squalid condition these beggars are leaves them constantly vulnerable to diseases of all kinds, including Ebola. They wake up in the morning without taking bath and rush to the streets.
Not unexpectedly, many of them lament their sad situation and express how much they intend getting themselves out of it. But there is no convincing sign that their dreams are achievable anytime soon.
But of more worrying concern is the situation of the children.
When such ugly scenarios continue to rear their heads in our society, attention rightly focuses on national and local governance structures set up to ensure they do not happen in the first place.
Cyril Mattia, Public Relations Officer of the Freetown City Council, acknowledges the dire situation of the beggars but says they are smearing the beauty of the municipality. He says the municipal authorities were appalled by the situation especially when the beggars carry on their activities at important locations within the Central Business District (CBD). He says most of them bring their personal effects with them to the streets, colonize “sensitive buildings” like the Bank of Sierra Leone (BSL), around State House, Post Office, among others, and even use anywhere as toilets.
“Whenever they become pressed, these people will not hesitate to defecate at the premises of those buildings,” he says.
Mattia tells Politico that few days prior to this interview conducted last March that the Metropolitan Police forcefully removed some beggars from these sites.
“[But] when you drive ten beggars away from a particular location, you would see twenty of them in the next few days,” he says.
When asked whether FCC has any programme aimed at bettering the lives of these people, Mattia said it wasn’t part of their mandate.
The council, he says, will not even attempt to take these people back to their original homes because “dishonest” people will see an opportunity to venture into the world of begging just to deceive the system.
Gradual removal
“Such a repatriation programme will cost FCC millions of leones,” he says.
Mattia however believes the only way out is through a gradual removal of the beggars. And he says this responsibility lies on the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs (MSWGCA).
Joseph Sinnah, Chief Social Services Officer in the ministry, admits it`s their responsibility but says they devolved some of these welfare functions to councils with the required funds that can help them undertake such activities. He says the ministry is there only to provide oversight function.
The Social Welfare ministry, Sinnah says, conducted a qualitative study of these children who roam the streets with elderly beggars and came up with, in response to the findings, a policy aimed at holistically addressing the “menace.”
“This policy will address issues of foster care, abandoned children and street kids,” he says. “The policy will be implemented soon.”
The National Commission for Children (NCC) was set up to ensure child welfare and protection. Its head, Olayinka Laggah, says at a recent gathering organized by the FCC that their goal is to ensure that children live in a safe and secure environment.
To achieve this, she adds, public support and cooperation is crucial.
“For a child to grow well, there must be collective effort by every one.”
Sierra Leone has a Child Rights Act, passed in 2007, but it has been largely ineffective, going by the continued abuse children are subjected to in this country daily.
At the Family Support Unit (FSU), Ritta Cole refers to presence of children in the streets as a clear example of child labour and exploitation. She says to allow a child to engage in any work that will affect their physical and emotional well being amounts to child exploitation. She says her office earlier put in place ‘Operation Dawn’ which focused mainly on the removal of children from the streets. But then the Ebola epidemic struck and halted everything.
The FSU has also quite recently came up with ‘Operation Dusk’ which targeted bar operators and adults who sexually exploit children, Cole says.
“If these children are left on the streets, the future of this country would be negatively affected.”
Apart from these children who go out begging with their parents, there is a good number of children who are permanently living on the streets. It is this situation that left Franklyn Bode Gibson, Mayor of the Freetown Municipality, expressing frustration over proliferation of “careless” and “irresponsible” parenting.
The precarious situation of these beggars and their children who endure the heat of the day and the chill of the night in our city centre represents the worst poverty indicators of the 21st century. This horrible situation warrants the swift intervention of relevant agencies or philanthropists.
Society should not sit down with folded arms and allow these beggars and children to relegate to the dustbins.
© Politico 04/06/15
