The Anambra State Government has initiated an operation against syndicates that use children to beg for alms in Awka, the capital city.
The Ministry of Women Affairs and the Awka Capital Development Authority (ACTDA) conducted the operation on Tuesday evening, detaining approximately 30 juvenile beggars and adults.
The flyover bridge at Aroma Junction has long been a haven for children beggars employed by syndicates to solicit alms.
The children are not only an eyesore as they go around during school hours begging for alms, they have also become a nuisance because they often steal from people, locals told DAILY POST.
“Anytime a group of charity organisations come to them to give out food, they start cause a very rowdy atmosphere, and at the end, they even steal the phones and other valuables of members of the organisations, who were not suspecting that some of them are thieves,” a resident of the area said.
A traffic warden in the area said: “Sometimes, you see them climbing the flyover and jumping down from that height. They constitute all manner of nuisance in that place, including stealing from themselves, passersby, and fighting.”
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Commissioner for Women’s Affairs, Mrs Ify Obinabo said: “We are arresting these children, not to make them victims, but to use them to get at the syndicates that brought them here for begging.
“You and I know that Anambra has a low number of out-of-school-children, and we will not stand and let these children remain in the streets while being used by syndicates.
“They will help us to trace the syndicates behind them and those are the people that the law will catch up with.”
Mr Ossy Onuko, ACTDA’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, stated that the operation was prepared in coordination with the Ministry of Women Affairs to take children off the streets.
Meanwhile, it was a difficult battle to round up the street children, who instantly ran as the enforcement team attempted to capture them, with some of them putting up resistance. They were, however, picked up, thrown into waiting trucks, and taken away.
Obinabo stated that the operation will continue in all areas of Awka to ensure that the town was free of minors being used by syndicates to beg for money.
