Creation of more cities will increase number of street children

By Mike Musisi

Former care giver to Uganda’s street children Rev. Dr. Kefa Sempangi has predicted that with the creation of more cities, the country is bound to get more children opting to the streets to try to come to terms with urbanization pressures.

He noted that with new cities coming up, urban population escalates, adding that this comes with reasons forcing children to the streets, and advised that more conducive sorroundings for enticing them off the streets are put in place.

He was on Saturday addressing former street children that grew up under his care, who had gathered at his home at Wantoni in Mukono municipality, to pave ways for realizing over shs 70m/= needed for launching revitalization of his African Foundation institution under which he gave assistance to over 6,000 street children.

The former UNLF legislator and Deputy Minister in Obote II government disclosed that former street children plan to identify local avenues for getting an income to sustain the foundation, noting that he is tired of globe trotting in search of funders.

He rubbished talk by unnamed people claiming that street children do not need homes for their rehabilitation, and said since they have no permanent place of abode, extending help to them may be impossible since they do not stay on specific streets all the time.

Street children Sempangi argued, are not comp[arable to orphans who continue to stay with their kins after death of their parents, adding that there is no guarantee that tomorrow you will find a street child on the same street you found him or her yesterday.

He was supported by Frank Semakula, a theological researcher and product of Sempangi’s care, who said that the Presbyterian Church head has proven prophets of doom wrong by bringing up scores of street children into respectable citizens worldwide.