Action plan on Sri Lanka's street children

Lankapuvath - An action plan to tackle the problem of Sri Lanka's street children and their plight is to be brought to the notice of the delegation of the European Commission in Sri Lanka. This assurance was given by Charge de Affaires of the European Commission in Sri Lanka Wouter L. Wilton, while accepting a report on a field study and communication project on street children in Sri Lanka in Colombo yesterday.

He added that attention should be focused on issues such as poverty alleviation, destitute people displaced by war in the North and East, plight of street children and disabled and other groups that need assistance for their sustenance. While according equal priority to displaced tsunami survivors.

The report on a field study and communication project on street children in Sri Lanka was handed over to the Charge de Affaires of European Commission by Dr. Rohana Luxshman Piyadasa of the Department of Mass Communication University of Kelaniya. The study was made to identify the rapidly burgeoning problems of street children in the island.

It has revealed that over 50 percent of street children in Sri Lanka fall in the age group of between 10 to 16 years. According to Dr. Rohana Luxshman Piyadasa who initiated the study, this is an alarming revelation as children of this age group are particularly vulnerable to bad influence.

These children often encounter sexual abuse, fall prey to drug trafficking, prostitution and are used as pawns in the illicit liquor trade, he said. The research for the study was carried out by 125 university students and was conducted in Colombo and 105 other major towns across the island excluding the North and East. This is the first time that an in-depth study on street children has been conducted in areas outside Colombo.

A total of 1043 children were identified in the study and case study was done on one child from each town. The findings revealed that 66 percent of street children or 53 percent spend the night on the street and other public places. The problem of street children in Sri Lanka is gradually becoming a social issue.

Therefore the action plan on street children is to be presented to relevant government institutions, religion bodies, foreign agencies and N.G.Os in order to start a national campaign to counter this problem.