By Arret Jatta
Children who once roamed the streets of urban Gambia as petty vendors are now turning to aggressive begging, raising concerns about the country’s fight against child labour and the enforcement of laws meant to protect vulnerable minors.
At the Senegambia, one of the country’s busiest tourist area, a growing number of children, some as young as five, spend their days on the streets begging instead of selling.
Eyewitness accounts from restaurant workers and residents in the area suggest a worrying trend- a shift from child street vending to calculated and often manipulative begging practices.
“These children are becoming too many around here,” said Fatou Keita, a salesgirl at a local restaurant in Senegambia.
“They come with mint leaves ‘nana’ or bananas, but they’re not really here to sell. They’ll offer the goods for free, just to pressure you into giving them money. And if you say no, they keep following you,” she narrated.
Mary Mendy, another restaurant worker in the area, described the situation as both sad and alarming:
“You will see very young children, maybe five or six years old, walking around with trays on their heads. I don’t think they go to school because they’re out here the whole day,” Mendy said.
This trend stands in violation of The Gambia’s Children’s Act of 2005, particularly Section 66, which strictly prohibits children under the age of 16 from engaging in labour that interferes with their education or endangers their physical, mental, spiritual, or moral development.
The law also criminalises forced child begging and classifies it under the worst forms of child labour.
In a recent parliamentary session, Gender and Children Welfare Minister Fatou Kinteh addressed concerns about children begging on the streets, emphasising that children belong in two primary places, home and school, not on the streets begging.
“We strongly feel that children have two places, home and school. They should not be in the streets begging,” she said.
To tackle this issue, Minister Kinteh revealed that her ministry has engaged Unicef to conduct an assessment of migrants and daaras (Quranic boarding schools) in areas where street begging is prevalent.
This initiative aims to understand the root causes of street begging among children and develop effective strategies to address the problem.
