District launches 22 care centers to combat child labor and begging

In order to combat child labor and mendicacity in Bogotá, the District Secretariat for Social Integration opened 22 new comprehensive care centers on Tuesday that will benefit more than 347 children and adolescents who were at risk in the capital.

This was announced by the Deputy Director for Children of the District Administration, who explained that the territorial units of the Mobile Strategy carry out comprehensive itinerant care processes through interdisciplinary actions that seek to address these risk conditions faced by some minors in the city , 430 that have been identified by the Secretariat, 83 of which have been reported by citizens.

“That is, with girls and boys found on the street, extracurricular and accompanying work is carried out, with recreational and pedagogical activities to mitigate the risk of them being accompanied by work again,” explained the deputy director.

The Secretariat also noted that, in the midst of the approaches being carried out in the city, district officials carry out processes of identification and care of children and adolescents who are at risk of child labour, taking action to activate care routes for the strengthening of children and adolescents who are at risk of child labour. the Family Network and the Restoration of Rights.

At the same time, he pointed out that these centers seek to strengthen skills and knowledge for the transformation of imaginaries that normalize child labor in the city, while carrying out actions that seek to resignify social and emotional relationships in families and communities, and make networks vivibilized community communities in the localities to help generate protective environments for minors.

“Last year more than 1,300 children were identified in 40 days we held. With these families, constant accompaniment has been made to verify that they are linked to the official schools of the District or to kindergartens. That is, not only identifying children and putting them in a census, but doing work so that the family understands that children should be in the best hands,” said Deputy Director Hernandez.

The group of professionals that will accompany children and adolescents are psychologists, social workers, educators and workshops, who design a comprehensive care strategy framed in the Mobile Strategy model and thus help to prevent and eradicate child labour in the city.

The pandemic could have caused a setback in the reduction of child labour in Colombia

Experts from the Universidad del Rosario fear that due to the covid-19 pandemic and the economic consequences it has triggered, children and adolescents will be forced to work.

In a report by RTVC Noticias, a report on Colombian Public Television, based on figures from the National Administrative Department of Statistics (Dane), it was noted that of the 10′756,000 children between the ages of 5 and 17 in the country, there are 523,000 working, or 4.9 per cent. Of these, 242,000 were in cities and municipalities, while 281,000 were in rural areas.

According to these Dane data, since 2012, child labour has been reduced to single digits from 10.2 per cent to 7.3 per cent in 2017, and to 4.9 per cent last year. In RTVC Noticias they also reported that 40 percent of minors who work do so out of obligation, since they must contribute money to their families.

Precisely for this reason, which is possibly exacerbated by the health emergency, at the Labor Observatory of the Universidad del Rosario and the Formal and Inclusive Economy Alliance (EFI) published a report expressing concern that there are setbacks in progress against this phenomenon that affects minors colombians.

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