Child neglect rampant in Alex
ALEXANDRA - Children's organisations in Alexandra are feeling the wight of child related abuse cases resulting from neglect.
Children’s organisations in Alexandra are feeling the burden of child-related abuse cases resulting from neglect.
The township has been in the limelight recently for child abuse cases. According to one of the organisations, only a few cases featured when the media was alerted, but there were more occuring on a daily basis that the organisations and police find difficult to cope with.
Kidz Clinic, based at the Alexandra Police Station, has been dealing with this scourge for years along with others like Lifeline, Adapt, Sanca and the city’s Department of Social Development.
Kidz manager Elizabeth Mokoena, said they were struggling to cope with child neglect cases. “Even two-year-old children are picked up [wandering around] the streets, and at times we have to keep them overnight with the whereabouts of their mothers unknown,”she said.
“In some instances, [the mothers] pitch up days later to find their children in places of safety, and [then] it becomes difficult for them to [get] them back.
“Many of them plead poverty as an excuse, but you find that they would have spent the night in shebeens spending the children’s grant.”
Mokoena stressed that communities were also apathetic to child abuse and didn’t bother to report abuse occurring next door. “Community workshops on children’s care and safety don’t seem to have an impact,” she said.
“[Also] mothers were getting younger, lacked parenting skills and took out their frustration by abandoning their children.”
Mokoena was also concerned that even when cases of child abuse where opened with the police, they were against the mothers – while the fathers were left to continue bearing unwanted children with other women.
“The maintenance system seems not to work, and also garnishee orders are ineffective as they relied on employers who seldom co-operated in effecting deductions from employees’ wages for maintenance of their children. Government should devise effective mechanisms to criminalise the neglect by fathers as childcare is also their responsibility,” she stressed.
Mokoena further expressed concern on the impact of child neglect on grandparents. “They are left to care for grandchildren from old age grants and pensions while mothers spent children’s grants on their own needs,” she stated.
Mokoena was more scathing about older men. “They perpetuated pregnancies on young and school-going girls while their own same age children are safe at their homes. Effective measures should be instituted by government to curb this destructive behaviour,” she concluded.
How can child abuse in Alexandra come to an end?
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