LIFE OF STREET CHILDREN: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY OF MUSLIM COLONY, ISLAMABAD

Abstract

In developing countries like Pakistan children roaming in streets is not unusual. In my study of street children in Muslim colony 7 out of 10 children who were visible on the streets and did indeed establish contact to their families. The goal of this study is to gain a better understanding of phenomenon of street children in Muslim colony near the shrine of Bari Imam. The research question was: What are the economic, demo graphical, and social reasons that lead Children to work?, In addition questions related to their educational and economic status, the perception of parents regarding their children and socio economic activities of street children were the key questions of the study A descriptive qualitative research design was used. Descriptive design allowed the researcher to collect the facts for description as well as understand the day to day activities of the street children in their real-life situation through observation and informal discussion. Snowball and purposive sampling techniques were used to find the relevant respondents. A sample of 25 children, 9-17 years old, both male and female were selected. Few interviews were conducted with children's parent. The respondents were randomly chosen. The only criterion was whoever was willing to have a detailed discussion on the topic. The result indicates that several factors forced children to work in the of street. These primarily include poverty, large family size, desire to be independent, ·low income complicated and difficult domestic environment, illiteracy, and rural to urban migration. The study also revealed that with the passage of time the situation is only aggravating. Once the children are forced to the streets for survival purposes, they adopt various ways to earn money, that is, through begging or scavenging car washing, selling plastic bags, selling small packets of snack items, drug abuse (glue), waste picking, shoe shining, and even petty crimes. Most of the street children are children "of the street" who live with their families but in the morning; they come out in the street, spend whole day there and at late night return to the home. The earning of the street children often forms a major contribution to the family income. Psychological reasons and abusive behaviour of the family are also found to be major reasons behind a child's decision to spend the day in the street.