UPND TO CRIMINALISE POVERTY

Dear Editor, ALLOW me space to comment on the revelation by Local Government and Rural Development Minister Garry Nkombo when he appeared in an interview on Diamond Television on Tuesday night, January 16, 2024.

In response to the question by the interviewer on how cholera could be eradicated, the minister gave a catalogue of measures to be put in place. He went on to say that it was not right to have street kids and to stop that, the UPND government would enact a law where parents to street kids would be arrested and prosecuted.

Leadership wherever it exists has among its roles finding solutions to problems of varying complexities. To solve a problem, the root cause must first be found or else sub optimal solutions will be put in place which will fail to solve the problem at hand.

Agreeably, street kids are a menace and the minister was right, street kids do contribute to the spread of cholera in the sense that they don’t answer the call of nature in designated places; it is actually them who invented used shake shake packaging materials as alternative toilets; unfortunately enough even adults are now using them.

As an immediate cholera intervention for the City of Lusaka, the minister can consider the construction of a chain of public toilets along the western side of the railway line from Down Town Mall all the way to the Great East Road flyover bridge.

But to suggest that parents to street kids should be arrested is being overzealous. The minister should have first interrogated the motive of these children to be on the streets.

Is it possible for a child to leave a home where all its needs are catered for and instead choose to spend days and nights on the streets begging?

It is clear that these children are running away from poverty in their homes; it is poverty which is the driving force for these children to leave the “comfort” of their homes and risk their lives on a daily basis just to find something to eat.

A lasting solution to poverty is creation of employment in all the productive sectors of the economy; if this is not done, the minister should brace himself for more children on our streets.

Therefore, by suggesting that parents to the street kids should be arrested, Mr Nkombo is proposing that the UPND government will criminalise poverty.