By Theem Isaac Machar Akot
Although training a child in skilled types of work is helpful and mandatory, exposure to heavy-force labour constitutes mistreatment.
The concerned Ministries of Labour and Gender and Social Welfare should pay attention to the appalling situations South Sudanese children are going through.
Parents in South Sudan across the nation are brutal in child upbringing. Having travelled to most parts of the country, I discovered that all parents have similar cruel attitudes towards their children!
Children are burdened with domestic work: in Bahr El Ghazal and Upper Nile Regions, children are forced to cultivate, shepherd cattle, carry heavy things from and to far distances, water livestock, and subject them to work for many hours like slaves. In the Equatoria region, children are used as porters—they carry heavy gallons of water, tilt farms, and walk from house to house, selling fruits and other types of foodstuffs for long hours.
Most parents mercilessly beat their children when a child fails to work as hard as they expect or when they decline to bear their instructions. Others chase children away from their homes and deny them parental controls they should have been granted. Street life is extremely high due to the fact that the majority have abandoned parenthood.
Too many children have chosen criminal life since the kind of miserable life they are in forces them to apply all possible means to survive.
Forced labour makes children feel miserably lamented and deprived of their rights. However, children exposed to hard labour are ever heartbroken, shocked, worrisome, depressed, and lacking freedom. This exposure makes them dull since desperation affects the functionality of the mind. As a concerned citizen and a fellow brother, I feel disheartened to see the generation that is hoped for replacement potentially losing away.
Therefore, I am appealing to all parents across the country to take child care mandatorily for the care and protection parents render grooms and shape young ones into who they are and who they become in the future.
Children are the happiness and the bond that binds couples together. Many women are staying in the wrong marriages with the wrong partners because of the children they have produced with them. Without children, we will have no continuity and expansion of societies.
Finally, children are the source of joy; thus, they are to be cared about so that they do work proportional to their strength.
Have a blessed day!