“After President Yoweri Museveni declared the first lock down, my mother ran out of means to care for me and my two other little siblings. She decided to connect me to Mukono Town to start working as a house maid with the hope that I can earn something to support the family,” Sharuwa Sitenda, 16, from Lyantonde District, narrates to The Insight Post how she was forced into working at a tender age.
The teenage girl we found at Mukono Police Division dressed in an Islamic red hijab had seemingly taken some days without proper feeding symptomised with dry mouth and poor concentration among other body weaknesses. She is a daughter to a bar janitor, single mother Sharifah Namagga, whose husband reportedly abandoned them home two years ago.
“My mother put me on a bus from Lyantonde to Kampala City where I was picked up by a boda boda cyclist who brought me to a fenced house in Mukono Town. I worked for three months before my boss threw me out saying the lockdown had drained her of all the capacity to further pay for my services,” she says.
She adds: “I was meant to be paid Shillings 70,000 every month, which the boss claimed to have sent to my mother. She ordered me to vacate her home without allowing me to pick my bag or the book where I had written my mother’s telephone number to contact her.”
She further says she started wandering on Mukono streets while sleeping on verandas for twelve days until she got drained by hunger, and fainted. She recalls that a good Samaritan picked her up and she was taken to Mukono General Hospital for medical attention before she was referred to Mukono police.
Just like Sitenda, Mercy Namboozo, 14, a daughter to David Ondelo and the mother identified by one name of Nafuna from Mbale District, was also reportedly sent on bus by the father to an aunt at Kampala for a holiday. However, while in Kampala, she was again sent somewhere else to work as a house maid in Mukono Town.
With the declaration of the second lockdown, her boss ordered her to return to her aunt in Kampala without giving her transport fare. Because she lacked means of transport and knowledge about the place, Namboozo ended up on Mukono streets where she was also picked up and dropped off at Mukono police.
The Mukono Police Division Family Protection Unit head, Stella Uleah, notes that the two children could not remember directions of the places where they were dropped to work from.
“This seems to be a trick used by people involved in promoting child labour to traffic and hide these girls inside their fenced houses for some months and chase them away helplessly after using them. Using our various security intelligence, we are trying to establish the lead into the entire gist of the matter,” Uleah says.
Uleah further reveals that police receive between one and two children with similar cases on a daily basis, some of which they manage to re-unit with their families and that others are sent to hermitages.
She further indicates that many children get involved in child labour as a result of child abuse and torture, which she attributes to the rampart domestic violence.
After the declaration of first the lockdown and its additions, many things were put and remained on standstill including schools. This forced many children into forced labour for survival.
Mothers became the heads of families after husbands failed to provide and abandoned them. These mothers now struggle to find ends meet and out of pressure, surrender their children to illegal works.
Joseph Mukubi, the former Community Development Officer for Mpatta Sub-county, says the situation for child labour is worse mainly at landing sites where children are forced into prostitution, being house maids and fishing.
“Much as the majority of children would wish to pursue justice and freedom of living as children, following up their matters in institutions of laws sometimes becomes difficult due to less funding and corruption among government institutions,” he says.
Sylvia Namubiru Mukasa, the chief executive officer of Legal Aid Service Provider’s Network-LASPNET, says communities require trained committees on the brief and lawyers on the brief ready to offer free legal aid to such children.
She explains that when there are people on watch brief, it becomes easier to identify and follow up such cases to the end.
English 