Urban destitution is a phenomenon wherein urban people do not have anyone in their home, with severe malnutrition, have a primary-aged school child out of school, and live in a household in which at least, one person has lost two or more children in most cases. They are also the people who suffer from malnutrition, don’t have electricity to turn on their lights, practice open defecation, do not have clean water, have only dirty cloth, cook with wood, dung, or straw.
All of the destitute are deprived in at least one-third of the weighted indicators, according to Oxford Poverty And Human Development Institute. In Ethiopia, according to the data obtained from the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (MoLSA), more than 88,000 destitute stop their lives over streets in 11 most urbanized towns of the nation. It shows that rural-urban migration takes the first driving cause while the reasons of migration are different. As well, the World Bank 2018 Report reveals that Ethiopia, with tremendous social and economic progress, has been implementing robust midterm plans to minimize poverty.
And the nation’s urban headcount poverty diminished from 36.9 percent in 2000 to 14.8 percent in 2016 even though victims of street have been increasing timely as reports indicated from MoLSA. Similarly, researches conducted on urban destitute in Ethiopia demonstrate the impact of absolute poverty caused by unemployment, drug addiction, and rural-urban migration as root causes of urban impoverishment. Likewise, the study conducted by the Ethiopian Research Development Institute in collaboration with MoLSA last year verified that over ten thousand street children live on street in Ethiopia, most of them in Addis. International NGOs and governmental sectors in collaboration with other stakeholders also attempted to pull down the rate of highly growing number of street children, however, the number is at increasing rate steadily and becoming chronic.
And the recent UNICEF report also estimated that 41 million children aged below 18 are living under chronic poverty. Depending on the researches, MoLSA launched Urban Developmental Food Security Program that was planned to minimize the number of urban destitute, before two years. It included that 22 thousand people were estimated to be beneficiary of the program within five year implementation. And the program gained financial support of 450 million USD from World Bank and the government.
The program was designed to work on urban destitute recovery with temporary sheds, health service, economic support, social and physiological support and life skill training, foster care, institutional care and others. Addis Ababa takes the first allotment of urban destitute compared to other urban areas. MoLSA also revealed last year during the discussion of program that the need for better life makes most street children migrated from their mother village.
The number of urban destitute, especially street children has become serious problem in urban areas of the nation. The ministry also comprises these street children as part of beneficiary from the program. In this week, Addis Ababa City Administration Deputy Mayor Takele Uma, told that more than 50,000 street children are living in the city with miserable life. On the event, he lauded that the inevitable duty of minimizing ruralurban migration. He urged regional states to play an active role in reducing migration, adding that the city administration is committed to cooperate with these regional states.
As to the mayor, most street children living in Addis Ababa are mainly from regional states of Oromia, Amhara, Tigray and the South. Creating employment opportunities nearby their home villages is the mere alternative to tackle rural-urban migration as preventive measure of displacement. For this purpose, six recovery centers have been arranged to recuperate street children. “The main objective is not to feed these street children but to reunite every victim to their dreams’’ he noted.
Thousands of voluntary youths demonstrated their desires to partake in the started movement to fund street children. Fund raising mechanisms have been planned and entered to implementation. Concerts with coordination of artists, SMS service with ethio-telecom, as well as Ethiopian Air Lines are the major target of collecting the fund. Therefore, it is the responsibility of all the citizens and collaborators to retrieve the life of disfavored street people by making contributions to Social Trust Fund (STF) that was launched by the city mayor.
Herald February 1/2019
BY YESUF ENDRIS
