Rwanda: Street Children to Be Taken to Rehab Centres

Rwanda: Street Children to Be Taken to Rehab Centres
The New Times (Kigali)

March 13, 2007
Posted to the web March 13, 2007

Gasheegu Muramila
Kigali

The Mayor of Kigali City Council, Dr Aisa Kirabo Kacyira, has said that the Council will ensure that street children are taken off the streets and accorded a decent living.

Addressing a press conference on the forthcoming Kigali centenary celebrations and the city’s challenges on March 9 at the Council Hall, Kirabo also urged caring persons to supplement the efforts to improve the street children’s livelihoods.

"This problem is not only in Kigali; street children and beggars are common in developing countries. Making these problems end can only be through everybody’s participation in one way or another. It’s a joint responsibility, not Kirabo’s alone," the mayor said.

Singling out the Gitagata Rehabilitation Centre in Eastern Province as one of the centres that will take up the children, Kirabo said that efforts in collating information about the street children would be doubled.

"Screening will be emphasized because it’s the only way we can know which children have guardians and those who don’t and need help," she added.

Responding to a query about the centenary celebrations’ time frame, Kirabo said: "I’m glad you people are in the media and your work is to speak and write. We have a better connection to the people through you. People need to know and we need their full support. What will you tell the people about the celebrations if we kept quiet [on the plight of street children] and concentrated on the preparations?"

She also hailed associations that have involved themselves in cleaning the city and asked journalists to also form a similar association.

"It’s important that you also help us in cleaning the city [the way] motorists, scouts and others have done," Kirabo said.

Kigali City’s hundred years of existence stem from the time of a German, Dr Richard Kandt, the first European resident who set up an administrative residence here in 1907.