Children are not decision makers for themselves. They should not be used by parents or guardians as business people. Parents should get their children involved in any form of commercial activities in the existing or emerging socioeconomic conditions. Children should be therefore encouraged by their parents to take their works seriously in schools so that they and avoid distractions. Parents are required to protect their children and wards from roaming the streets of cities and other bigger towns in the name of trading in goods and food items.
Researches have it that children in Sierra Leone have been and continue to be victims of vulnerabilities to so many inhumane and cruel actions of child predators. Children who are engaged in street trading, are mostly forced on them by their parents, and they continue to be exposed to different forms of abuses such as child labour, commercial sex exploitations, human trafficking, forced labour predominantly in mining communities, drug dependencies and addictions, illegal gambling, prostitution etc., under the watch of state child-service providers-Ministries, Departments and Agencies. And the new business in town being undertaken by children supposed to be in school, is the ‘Waka’ Fine bus ticket street vending. School-going children shouldn’t be seen everywhere selling bus tickets. Bus tickets since the establishment of public transport service were sold in the buses by the facilities’ immediate managers not vendors out of the buses.
Besides, placing children on jobs such as ‘Waka’ Fine bus tickets sales bear the tendencies of exposing them-children to abuses. Therefore school children serving as ‘Waka’ Fine bus ticket vendors should be urgently mitigated by reverting children to the classrooms. Securing tickets before boarding poorly managed Metro Transport ‘Waka’ Fine buses must be reviewed to meet modern transport service trends. It has its fair share of challenges, especially in trying to get the service without a ticket, during which passengers are always asked out of the buses either by the drivers or their conductors. This is due the fact that ‘Waka’ Fine bus tickets are sold out of the buses. They are being sub-contracted to different stores across the city as if the drivers are not capable of selling the tickets. That is abnormal for a public transport service provider like ‘Waka’ Fine. Ticket sales should be reassigned to the drivers so that they can be bought upon entering the facilities as it happens universally. Reassigning the ‘Waka’ Fine bus tickets to the facilities’ drivers can go a long way in addressing children-street trading.
Although the ‘Waka’ Fine bus tickets vending looks like a significant aspect of the five hundred thousand job offers promised on July 7 2023 by President Julius Maada Bio, during his re-election campaign in 2023. Yet, it should exempt school children. Children should be left out of this kind of ruling class pro-partisan and government policy. They should be encouraged to stay in schools and benefit from the moribund Free Quality Education if there is anything called so. It is public disgrace to see children selling bus tickets for Fifty Leones (SLE50) profits.
Bus tickets, since Adan and Eve were sold by drivers if not their conductors, upon entering the buses, not until when Metro Transport contracted ticket sales to vendors including children of school going ages. The ‘Waka’ Fine bus tickets trade should not be in the hands of children as seen at public transport terminals in Freetown. Government through the line ministry of Children’s Affairs, the Children’s Commission among other children’s serving agencies should bring children-street trading with specific reference to ‘Waka’ Fine bus ticket vending by children to a permanent halt by way of taking a joint strong action.
Children as young as nine and eleven, sell ‘Waka’ Fine bus tickets all over the place only for proceeds of SLE50 from the sales of each booklet. This must be punctuated moving forward by removing children from the ‘Waka’ Fine bus ticket trade and other forms of child-street trading before it goes out of hands with the spread of children-street vendors everywhere.
‘Waka’ Fine bus tickets vending scenes at terminals starting from Calaba Town, PMB, Lumbley onto central Bus Station at Falcon Bridge are always jam parked with toddler-vendors, who always approach passengers with their markets saying; in the Krio lingua franca that; ‘d Pa, d Mammy buy you ‘Waka’ Fine bus tickets’, instead of being in schools. That is counter-productive to government’s human capital development, not to mention the declining FQE which should be retaining children in schools. Tickets trading and whichever forms of street vending by children is not the solution to the growing economic hardship. Hence, child-street traders in ‘Waka’ Fine bus tickets should be discouraged by government through the line MDAs and their development partners if we were to talk about a productive human capital development drive considering children being the future of the nation.
It could be recalled that the then Sierra Leone People’s Party-SLPP presidential candidate for the 2018 election, – President Bio, proposed a policy getting all children to school. Failure to meet that according to the policy was going to be met with severe government’s penalties for defaulting parents. Nonetheless, closed to six years since the declaration children are today selling everywhere trading in different types of goods and food items.
The rolling out of the FQE was received by scores of under-aged children who have since 2018 to date been roaming the streets of Sierra Leone, mostly serving as bread-winners for their parents. For God’s our children should not be used as bread-winners. They should not be enslaved in the name of trading in ‘Waka’ Fine bus tickets and imposing other forms of street trading, child labour, abuses of all forms and the likes. So government should stand firm and protect our children from abusers.
