Child hustlers on the increase

Police lookouts and gun transporters. After-dark taxi operators and prostitutes. Hitmen for the island’s unrelenting gangs. These are the job descriptions of some of Jamaica’s children; those most hardened by cold nights and sweat-stained days ‘hustling’ on the nation’s streets.

According to the just-released and long-awaited Study of Children Working and Living on the Streets in Jamaica, their portfolios start as young as age five, usually with begging and windshield wiping. Then, their zeal for education fades as networks widen and scums much older lure them with promises of protection and higher wages. ‘Hustling’, they call it; the labour term that suggests that they are doing something illegal.

In other cases, entire classrooms are wiped out, face to face and online, particularly on Fridays, as children stay away from educational institutions to work in hazardous environments. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bustamante High School in Clarendon, for example, had lost more than 25 per cent of its 11th-graders who sculled school to work with fishermen at the Rocky Point Fishing Village.

These considered, the paltry recommendations laid out in the Study of Children Working and Living on the Streets in Jamaica cannot suffice without strict sanctions for parents, argued veteran criminal defence attorney Peter Champagnie.

He said the days of pussyfooting with delinquent parents must come to an end, as the country is held hostage to gun crimes mostly by teenagers whose victims are usually teens themselves.

Champagnie’s sentiments came hours after the report was officially launched at a Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA) press conference on Wednesday. They sparked retort from child advocates who argued that the issue is not so simple to fix.

PROSTITUTION RINGS

There are an estimated 1,140 to 2,000 children living or working on the streets, according to the study.

Dr Joy Brown, principal director of the Institute for Applied Social Research, which conducted the study, gave ghastly accounts from children and parents canvassed in the research.

“One young boy, nine – he works in construction, he carries drug, he has broken into a house and he said that his boss employs a lot of children. There is a male, a 13-year-old in Kingston, who bakes and sells fruits, he is also employed by a boss. Another male, 15, works in construction, drives a taxi at nights and his boss employs three children,” shared Brown, who also pointed to prostitution rings involving both boys and girls islandwide that could have detrimental implications for Jamaica’s ‘Tier 2’ international human trafficking ranking.

“There are children who reside in fishing villages and some of the girls sell sexual favours to fishermen or otherwise beg for a living,” she continued of the findings of the research, recommendations from which will advise an implementation task force to be named in two weeks.

“Some children are hired by senior family members. Some children were commissioned by gang leaders, and in one community with a young girl, about nine, she reported that her boss, who is a youth, sends her and others to work and punishes them when their earnings are too low or when they fall out of line. Punishment involved knocking children’s heads together or cutting them with knives,” she said, noting poverty and greed as push and pull factors to child labour.

Exotic modelling of girls as young as 13 are also among the job titles; in one case, participants made as much as $20,000 weekly, she said, noting the heredity of child labour in some homes.

SEVEN RECOMMENDATIONS

The CPFSA-commissioned study gave seven recommendations that ranged from stemming intergenerational inequality with income-generating programmes, addressing children’s learning and psychological challenges and tackling other factors that force children on to the street. For Champagnie, however, these recommendations are mostly “beating around the bushes”.

“It is a clear reflection that there is parental neglect, and it only seems to be getting worst. There are reports that gangs are now recruiting children as part of their criminal organisation, and it is a result of the parents not having proper control of their children,” he charged.

“I cannot understand why there isn’t the will to prosecute parents who neglect their children. The worst form of it, to my mind, is child labour, which is illegal. Until the parents are prosecuted, you are going to have this problem. The children do not know better so it is the parents who should be held accountable,” he said, debunking arguments of poverty.

“If we use poverty as an excuse for everything, we would be in a very sad state. That argument could be an insult to a number of parents who are poor but do not stoop to the level where they send out their children to work or to be abused.”

But it is not as easy as that, argued children’s advocate Betty Ann Blaine.

“Most of the children who we are talking about are from the poorer working classes of Jamaica, most were born out of wedlock, raised by single mothers with no fathers in their lives. When you prosecute a mother, who is the main breadwinner and head of the households, what happens to those children?” Blaine reasoned.

“While, if there are very severe cases of neglect and abuse within the household and parents must be held accountable for those, our first point is to provide the information and support so that they (parents) can make the right decisions. That is where we are going with the good parenting/positive parenting campaign that is to be launched shortly,” offered Chief Executive Officer of the CPFSA Rosalee Gage-Grey on the issue.

corey.robinson@gleanerjm.com