The Director of a Mukono primary school initially started to provide education and humanitarian care services to disabled children is stranded with four disabled children who were brought into the country by Tanzanian nationals to use them for collecting alms on streets.
Good Samaritan Inclusive Primary School, located at Nassuuti in Mukono Central Division, was founded by the Foundation for the Disabled Person’s Development Organisation (FDEDEPO) to initially provide education and other humanitarian services to disabled children.
Of late, according to the director, Fred Migadde, the school has become a destination for Tanzanian disabled children picked from the streets by police and forwarded to the district Probation Officer who in turn takes them to the school for care and possible re-union with their relatives.
In an interview with this reporter on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on December 3, Migadde said they receive the children from police and the probation office without any provision for their upkeep, which he adds, gives them an extra financial burden in food, drugs, clothing and other requirements.
He says the children are brought into the country by crafty Tanzanians who convince their parents that there are white donors to provide care and education for their children in Uganda, but end up placing them on the streets to beg for these crafty people.
According to Migadde, each of these children are supposed to get between sh40,000-50,000 and that failure to raise the amount earns them a thorough thrashing. Their bodies are covered with scars and fresh wounds, all testimony of the beating.
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“These people have no permanent places of abode and keep sleeping in lodges from time to time, and live a nomadic life, going to other towns like Lugazi and Jinja, apparently to keep law enforcers off their track; some have several times been apprehended by police but almost immediately released,” he narrated.
Migadde tells a story of a Tanzanian women who was denied access to one of the children called Rehema who had been retrieved from the streets, and the woman proceeded to the Tanzanian High Commission where she reported the matter; High commission officials travelled to Mukono and discovered that the women was instead a wrongdoer who was just abusing the innocent girl’s rights,” he said.
Migadde added that he does not know the whereabouts of the woman whom he said was established, that she has six such children under her care and used for similar purposes.
He is therefore appealing for assistance from the government to provide the necessary care to these children. He said the children are finding difficult times and at the same time their fellows and care givers given the fact that they do not speak English but Swahili only.