Crackdown on Senegal street children draws anger

DAKAR, Saturday

In recent weeks, packs of shoeless boys and girls have been coaxed off the streets where they have spent their childhoods, crying and frightened as they are loaded onto buses in the Senegalese capital.

The crackdown on child begging comes after years of inaction and is praised by children’s groups but greeted with anger by Islamic figures in the west African nation.

The children are from a mix of poor or homeless families and others known as “talibes” — boys sent out to beg by Islamic tutors to make money for their boarding schools.

They are brought to Guinddi Children’s Centre in the capital accompanied by social workers, where they are interviewed and checked for signs of maltreatment and disease.

“The children are generally unaccompanied. When they come here we ask them for phone numbers of their Koranic teacher,” explained Maimouna Balde, director of the Guinddi centre.

Parents, or Islamic teachers known as “marabouts”, will generally come and pick up the children, Balde said, whereupon the centre’s staff explain that if their charges are found on the streets again they will be prosecuted.

“The operation will continue for as long as there are children on the streets,” she said.

With 270 street children picked up in the first two weeks of July in Dakar, the plan is a long way from dealing with the 30,000 talibes estimated to be begging daily.