Papua New Guinea's government is hoping revised child protection laws will put a halt to increasing numbers of children forced to fend for themselves on the streets.
Transcript
Papua New Guinea's government is hoping revised child protection laws will put a halt to increasing numbers of children forced to fend for themselves on the streets.
The updated Lukatim Pikinini Act will allow courts to declare a child the responsibility of the state if they can't be re-homed.
But as Jamie Tahana reports, child advocates say tinkering with legislation will do little to solve a much larger problem.
Our correspondent in Port Moresby, Todagia Kelola, says the number of children left to fend for themselves on the streets of the capital appears to be increasing. He says the children while away their days begging so they can buy necessities, are often either orphans or children who have been abandoned by their parents.
TODAGIA KELOLA: These street kids, they just go and they start begging or they don't go to school although their age requires that they have to be in school but they don't have a parent or somebody who can look after them and then send them to school and all that.
Port Moresby's Governor, Powes Parkop, says there's no way to gauge just how many children there are on the city's streets, but he says it is getting worse.
POWES PARKOP: It's a new phenomenon emerging in our capital city, in our country. But children, as you know, are vulnerable people who can be easily taken advantage of and given the lack of clear policy and law, that is the concern I have as present.
The Community Development Minister, Delilah Gore, has announced the revision of the country's child protection laws which will allow the courts to declare a child the responsibility of the State. Ms Gore told EMTV the amended Lukautim Pikinini Act will try and reacquaint street kids with relatives in other parts of the country, and hold parents who abandon their children accountable for their failures.
DELILAH GORE: This law is just helping these children to put them in the right place so they are cared for and looked after, they're fed and they're educated.
Delilah Gore says in cases where children can't be placed with relatives, they may be taken in to the State's care and put in what she calls out-of-home care centres. But the founder of a charitable group that works with vulnerable children in Port Moresby says he knows of no such centres and the government needs to do more than merely tinker with legislation. Father John Glynn says while he supports the changes, social agencies are struggling to cope with the skyrocketing number of street children.
JOHN GLYNN: I don't know what the ultimate solution is except the government is going to really have to focus on the problem and put serious money, really big bucks, into cleaning up the whole area of social services, of caring for people in need.
Father Glynn says the government has its priorities wrong when it is investing hundreds of millions in roads and stadiums, while Port Moresby only has three gazetted child protection officers.
JOHN GLYNN: The problem is getting worse, not better. The city is getting desperately overcrowded. Nobody knows the population of the city, we certainly don't know how many children there are. There are so many on the streets. My little organisation, we're overcome by the demands that are placed on us sometimes.
The new legislation will be tabled in Parliament when it sits next month.
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