Bangladesh’s 48 per cent street children live in Dhaka Div

Street child in Srimangal Railway Station, Bangladesh. Wikipedia.

Jehangir Hussain

Approximately 48.5 per cent of the country's street children aged 5 to 17 live in Dhaka Division.

Of them, around 22.7 per cent live on the streets of Dhaka South City and 18.3 per cent -- on the streets of Dhaka North City.

About  82 per cent of the street children are boys and 18 per cent are girls, according to Street Children Survey 2022 of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) released on Monday.

UNICEF assisted in conducting the survey.

The results of street child survey 2022 were officially released at a function held at the Statistics Bhaban at Agargaon in the capital, attended by Planning g Minister MA Mannan as the chief guest.

State Minister of Planning Dr Shamsul Alam and Secretary of Statistics and Information Management Division Shahnaz Arefin attended as special guests at the function chaired by BBS Director General Matiar Rahman and attended by UNICEF Bangladesh Representative Sheldon Yate.

Kazi Islam, Deputy Director General of BBS gave welcome speech.

 MA Mannan said, "There was no official updated statistics on street children. BBS has filled that void efficiently. The data of this survey will now be helpful in planning to improve the quality of life of street children."

He expressed the hope that BBS will play a leading role in conducting such surveys in future as required by the government.

State Minister of Planning Dr Shamsul Alam said, "The reflection of the cries behind development has surfaced in the street child survey. Their rights deserve deep discussions. A full survey would have been better. We have succeeded in holding the census, although it was costly and time-consuming. Street children are a huge waste of resources. A special project should be taken for them."

Joint Secretary of Statistics and Information Management Division Deepankar Roy conducted open discussion at the publication event. Street child survey report-2022 was presented by Director of Demography and Health Wing Masood Alam.

He said, "following proper survey method, the sampling frame was formulated by conducting quick count of street children across the country. The survey was conducted on street children aged 5 to 17  at the second stage."

According to the survey, there are four male street children against one female child. The average age of street children is 12.3. Chittagong division with 20.4 per cent has the second highest number of street children and Sylhet division has the lowest number at 4.9 per cent. Among the districts, Mymensingh has the highest of 6.9 per cent followed by Barishal with 5.9 per cent, Bhola-- 5.4 per cent, Cumilla -- 4.5 per cent, Kishoreganj -- 4.1 per cent and Cox's Bazar the lowest at 3.8 per cent.

The survey revealed 37.8 per cent of street children came to cities due to poverty.

It showed 15.4 per cent are born in towns of parents who had came to towns, 12.1 per cent leave home in search of work, two out of every five street children  came to the cities alone. Three out of 10 street children never attended school. Among the street children, 18.7 per cent passed Class five. Few street children studied at lower and higher secondary schools.

About one-fourth of street children smoke, 12 per cent are addicted to drugs.

Street children told the Daily Observer, 64 per cent of them don’t want to go back to their families. Parents refused to take back 21.3 per cent of children, 15.9 per cent of the children have no family ties. The reason for not wanting to go back to their families is that most of them said, 'Freedom will be lost.'

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