Streets of despair

By: 9 years ago

Who hasn’t seen children literally living in the streets in these parts, their innocence quickly banished by the sordid realities of knife-edge existence? According to ChildHope Philippines, as many as 30,000 make the streets of Metro Manila their home. Daily brutalized, they are shaped by their circumstances into society’s outsiders and, more often than not, become outlaws beyond redemption.

Unbeknownst to many, April 12 is the International Day for Street Children. Here, young representatives of various NGOs—all former or current street children—marked the day by presenting to the five presidential candidates a poignant cry for help contained in a five-page letter.

Among the questions they raised, as reported by the Inquirer’s Annelle Tayao-Juego, were: What will you do about government shelters where children are abused and their rights violated? How will you help change society’s negative perceptions about children with street connections? What will you do about the lack of public playgrounds for Filipino children?

They also spoke about the conditions in government shelters and the violence of so-called “rescue operations,” and asked that the government provide “decent” jobs for their parents as well as permanent housing and free medical care.

The Philippine government has had a long and complicated relationship with street children (per estimates, there are more than a million nationwide). The Department of Social Welfare and Development regularly sweeps the streets of the capital and puts the “catch” in government-run shelters, supposedly for their own good. But certain shelters have been likened to houses of terror. A particularly horrific case is that involving “Frederico,” then a ward of the Manila Reception and Action Center (RAC) managed by the city government of Manila. In 2014, he was shown in a photograph lying naked, emaciated and bruised on a cement floor. The photograph was taken by Catherine Scerri, deputy director of the children’s rights group Bahay Tuluyan.

READ: Manila shelter for street kids run like ‘concentration camp’/Philippines probes ‘prison’-like children’s center/Boy beaten to death by other wards in Manila shelter for street children

In fact Bahay Tuluyan has reported that a child was actually beaten to death by other children at the RAC. Many children have complained of physical abuse, assault, and even torture by the RAC staff, according to Bahay Tuluyan executive director Lily Flordelis.

“[The RAC] can definitely be described as a prison,” Scerri was quoted as saying in 2014. [“My colleagues] have compared it to a concentration camp. It is supposed to rehabilitate street children but it is not a child-friendly place.” She added: “The center officials said the place can accommodate about 100 people, but on any given day there can be as many as 400 there. Recently I saw about 160 boys sharing a room just about five-by-six meters wide. They have nothing in there but a bucket—for those who need to pee.”

The RAC is now closed for renovation as a result of an investigation conducted by the DSWD. The Manila government has reportedly announced that P5 million was allocated for the renovation. Yet there are other children’s shelters, such as the Boystown Complex in Marikina, truly unworthy of the name. On the other hand, there are privately-run, adequately-equipped shelters for abused, neglected and abandoned children, such as Pangasinan’s Caring for the Future Foundation.

And there is a glimmer of hope amid the bad news. Consider the case of Dennis Sumampong, now 25 and a former “rugby boy” from Zamboanga City, who survived abandonment and addiction through the intervention of the Akay Kalinga Center and has earned a degree in hotel and restaurant management. Sumampong says poverty and the absence of a family force children to live in the streets. “Work on your dreams, love yourself” is his counsel to others like him.

READ: Rugby-sniffing street kid now a college grad

Sumampong is proof that saving street children is no fool’s mission. These streets of despair have taken enough of the country’s young. Who among the presidential candidates, they who now promise the moon and the stars to the electorate, will prove to be the answer to the street children’s cry for help?

It’s incumbent on those who claim the right to lead the country to address this festering issue, and the big picture as well: the capacity (physical, mental, psychological, financial) of those who dare bring children into this world to nurture them into sound, intelligent beings capable of taking their destiny in their own hands.