Ministry to propose curfew on children to ensure their safety

The Ministry of Women, Children and Social Protection will propose imposing a curfew on children to ensure that children are not roaming on the streets and that parents and guardians are more responsible for their whereabouts.

Minister, Lynda Tabuya says they will consult with their stakeholders before they are able to propose it and it will not be included in the Child Protection and Child Justice Bills but it would be ideal to come under the Public Order Act.

Tabuya says this is being done in other jurisdictions because it is usually during the evening hours where children are facing exploitation, can be trafficked and sold into sex work.

She says by imposing this curfew, which the Ministry will be proposing, it will make parents and families more responsible in keeping the children at home because it cannot just be the job of the police.

She further says one really big issue that they find with the children that are on the streets is that they do not want to go back home, so the question is what is going on at home.

Tabuya says the responsibility of the children primarily is of the parents or guardians and it is not the responsibility of the Government to look after children and their legal mandate is that children come into State care when they are at risk, which means they face abuse or they are children in conflict with the law, which means they have been charged with a crime.

The Minister says the Ministry cannot just go onto the street and put children into their care unless there is an allegation of abuse towards these children which has been reported or a child has committed a crime and has been reported.

She says they can only pick up a child and take them back home but what happens is children returned to the streets so there is obviously the need for the Ministry to continue to work with their stakeholders, including the police, churches, the justice system in terms of their ability to take care of these children because at the end of the day, they belong to their parents and their families.