About 700 homeless people are being housed in social halls in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, as the City Council decides how to reintegrate them back into society.
The numbers had fluctuated since last week, as some of the homeless had returned to the streets, but overall they had increased from over 500 to about 750 by Monday afternoon, said Charles Amunga, an administrator and social worker with Nairobi City Council.
Pumwani social hall was housing between 350 and 400 people on Monday, with a further 200 in Bahati, and 150 in Kariokor, Amunga said.
Photos had been taken of about 90% of the boys in Pumwani, while data was still being collected on their identities and backgrounds, where they came from, and their educational needs, he said. Meanwhile, negotiations were ongoing with schools, vocational training centres, and the National Youth Service to establish what placements were available for them. Some offers of training from the private sector had already been offered, he added.
Preliminary data from Pumwani showed that many of the boys were “over-age”, or in their early 20s, which meant that schools and training institutes might not be prepared to take them on, he said. The Council was appealing to institutes to offer placements “on humanitarian grounds”.
About 80 percent of those who had been screened had said they were interested in pursuing their education, he added.
Apart from volunteers donating their time, food and clothes to the initiative, many others had tried to dupe the authorities into accepting them as “street people”. The boys staying in Pumwani (over 15 years of age) had to be transferred to Bahati, while those in Bahati would be moved to a centre in Kayole, said Amunga: “Pumwani was too open. We had local people coming in stealing from the boys, looking for food, sleeping in the place,” he added.
Many other children from slum areas, who were not “genuine” street children, were also turning up at the social halls to avail themselves of the free food and clothes.
While social workers were holding discussions on how to reintegrate the homeless, the question of financing their school fees, training and living expenses — promised by Nairobi City Council — remained unanswered, Amunga said.
A meeting would be held on Tuesday in which various interested parties, donors, institutes and schools would get together to establish what opportunities were available, said Margaret Jobita, head of social services and housing at the Nairobi City Council.
Meantime, informal classes were being held in the social halls, and at least 10 street children had been reunited with their families, she said. By Monday, it remained unclear what the total required budget for the programme would be, she added.
“They haven’t realised the complexity of the problem,” commented Sister Mary Killeen, director of the Kenya support office of an Austrian donor, Drei Koenigs Aktion (DKA). “A child who is high on glue can’t learn to be a driver — he or she is not fit to attend courses.”
“A huge rehabilitation process is necessary,” she said, adding that rehabilitation programmes, of which there were extremely few in Kenya, could cost up to 6 000 Kenyan shillings per night.
Street children had extremely low concentration levels, said Killeen, and therefore needed smaller classes, interesting and interactive programmes, and teachers who could cope with them. On top of this, many had serious linguistic difficulties as they spoke “sheng” — a blend of tribal languages, Kiswahili, and English. If put into a normal class, they would start bullying and extorting money from the other children, and raping the younger girls, she said.
The pilot initiative, announced on 24 January by the Ministry of Local Government, gave Nairobi City Council the mandate of identifying street children and families in the central business district of Nairobi for transfer to the social halls, as the beginning of a series of interventions to help them.
The response from street dwellers has been positive so far, on the understanding that the City Council will deliver on its promises of free education, training and rehabilitation for all.
The government of Kenya estimates that there are about 250 000 street children and 1,9-million child labourers. – Irin