http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/children-abused-by-poverty/story-e6frg6z6-1225983453730
Children abused by poverty
Deborah Cassrels
From: The Australian
January 08, 2011 12:00AM
CHILD beggars around tourist traps are notorious pedophile targets.
Concerned officials and charities say the street children, with no identification, easily slip through safety nets.
From the age of five they are forced to leave poverty-stricken villages in the Karangasem area of east Bali by money-seeking village mafia and parents.
Non-government organisations report child slave labour and sexual exploitation are common.
"The street children in Kuta told us their sisters of 15 and 16 years old were underage sexual workers, accompanying foreign tourists at night time," local child protector Anak Ayu Sri Wahyuni says.
Street kids, precluded from school, work the beaches by day, selling leather bracelets for about 50c, before staking out the dinner crowd at popular bars and nightclubs.
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An estimated 600 beggars target a brighter future on the streets. The children work the tourist circuit daily until 5am, when a bemo (bus) rounds them up to take them to Denpasar. There they sleep in dismal conditions, scores to a room, supervised by a boss, usually a relative.
Bali's beggars come from hamlets in the Kubu district of Karangasem province, on the rugged northeast slopes of Mt Batur. These isolated hamlets are home to more than 5000 people.
Says another child protection official, Luh Putu Anggreni: "They are illiterate, the husbands work as labourers, they have no money for contraception. They have to beg to feed all the children.
"They have no money for school fees. Women are victims of domestic violence. The kids want to be gigolos or female sex workers. They sleep together, there is incest and rape, they are at risk of HIV-AIDs and unwanted pregnancies. The fear is for a lost generation."
Homes are basic brick structures or huts consisting of plastic rubbish or leaves, with dirt floors, a kitchen and adjoining bedroom where an average family of 10 shares one bed. There are no toilets or running water.
In this oppressive milieu, health and social problems snowball, with suicide, sexually transmitted diseases, malnutrition, tuberculosis and other diseases rampant, according to officials and NGOs. Lack of education and the absence of family planning -- substantiated by scores of children -- are the drivers.
Access only via motorbike is a hair-raising journey over mountainous terrain. Prolonged water shortages force villagers to walk about 4km to the next village for water, while meals consist of cassava, the only plant to survive in the arid conditions. The plant, providing only starch, inhibits absorption of iodine, triggering widespread cases of goitre.
When Inquirer visited, villagers sat outside huts in the blistering sun doing nothing, but happily obliged for photos. The only adult to be seen beside one cluster of huts was a frail grandmother caring for about a dozen children, from babies to teens.
Parents typically seek labouring work in Denpasar for about 25 rupiah (less than 1c) a day, with beggar children the main breadwinners, earning R400,000 ($45) a month: too much to snub.
Though the Department of Social Services returns children to their villages, in little time they reappear on the streets, where it's so much easier to get their next bowl of rice.
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