Nation kicks off campaign to protect homeless kids

Local governments nationwide have stepped up efforts to help homeless children after five young boys were found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning in a garbage skip when they started a fire to keep warm in Bijie, Guizhou Province earlier this month.

Civil affairs authorities in Changchun, Jilin Province launched a 100-day campaign to help homeless children, and strengthened protective measures are also in place in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, which has an annual five-month campaign for homeless children, Xinhua reported.

Meanwhile, Wuhan authorities have organized cars and manpower to help homeless children wandering in the streets.

"It's actually a routine campaign. We have campaigns for homeless children in winter and summer," Liu Yong, director of the Wuhan Waifs Salvation and Protection Center, told the Global Times.

The center had helped 1,203 homeless children by the end of October. The city has 27 vehicles patrolling the streets. Police stationed at the center will also be called in if homeless children are found to be used by others to beg for money.

According to Liu, the Ministry of Civil Affairs have been mulling a family guardian evaluation system, where local civil affairs authorities pay return visits to the families of sent-back children.

"Also, city governments that find the children need to cooperate better with governments of their hometown to prevent such individual cases from happening again," Liu added.

Relying on local governments is not enough, and the parents of the children should also be responsible for their plight, Liu pointed out. "Parents should be responsible for their children. Now, what we see is more of a moral punishment rather than an obligatory penalty."

"We haven't considered punishing the parents in the case of the five children, because it's already very hard for them," a staffer with the information office of Qixingguan district government of Bijie, Guizhou Province who refused to be named, told the Global Times.

"We have a law on the protection of minors, but there are only very vague guidelines when it comes to parents' obligations, which are even less specific when it comes to punishment when they aren't carried out," Yang Jiangding, director of the Shanghai Children Research Center, said.