Greater care for street children

Efforts to help street children will be boosted, a minister said as he acknowledged the challenges in preventing children ending up on the street in the first place.

The death of five boys, sheltering in a dumpster in Guizhou province in November, exposed weaknesses in the system built to protect children, Civil Affairs Minister Li Liguo told China Daily in an exclusive interview.

"The lack of family responsibility was an element in the tragedy, but it also reflected flaws in our protection of children," he said.

"We must prevent vulnerable groups of children from begging and wandering the streets," he added. The term "vulnerable groups of children" usually refers to the homeless, the orphaned, children infected by HIV/AIDS, or children whose parent or parents are in prison or living in poverty.

The five boys, aged 9 to 13, inhaled deadly fumes after lighting a fire to battle the cold in a large waste container in Bijie, a city around 20 km from their village.

Their bodies were found by a trash collector.

The ministry has launched a campaign dedicated to helping vagrant children return to school.

The campaign allows community organizations to intervene when they find parents or guardians have not taken care of children.

Li said the government will encourage society to participate in helping vagrant children.

However, he admitted that challenges remain in helping children who are manipulated by adults to work on the street.

It is also difficult to help children without parental care, dropouts and those suffering from domestic violence, he said.

The country's civil affairs authorities have helped on average 150,000 vagrant children every year since 2003. Experts estimate that there are more than 1 million street children in China.

Li said the number of street children is declining.

Rescue centers for the homeless helped around 160,000 vagrant children in 2012. This represented a decline of 20,000 compared to 2011.

"It is not an easy job to send vagrant children home," said Zhang Ling, director of the Yunnan Provincial Rescue Center for Homeless People.

"Some children are too young to remember their identities or family information, and others refuse to tell our staff even if they know their home address because they don't want to be sent home."

There are complicated reasons behind children living or working on the street, but "80 percent or even 90 percent of children living on the street are there because of family issues", Zhang said. Divorce, domestic violence and abusive discipline often force a child to leave home, she added.

"If their family situation is the same after we send these children back, they will run away again," she said.

Chen Qiangping, 8, has lived in the Street Children Help and Protection Center in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, with his 13-year-old brother for six months.

The two brothers used to live with their divorced father.

He was a Fagin-type character who demanded 10 yuan ($1.60) each day from them.

If they failed they would be beaten. One day, their father disappeared and the brothers started living on the streets until a passer-by sent them to the center.

"Life is OK here, but a little boring," Chen said, adding that his favorite activity is playing basketball with friends in the center, currently home to seven vagrant children.