Zambia is beginning a new project this month to take street kids, most of them AIDS orphans, to military camps where they will learn carpentry and other skills. "We will begin with 50 street children this month," says Youth and Child Development Minister Gladys Nyirongo who pioneered the project to train the children and resettle them. Most children targeted for the training program are orphans who have lost their parents from AIDS and are trying to survive on the streets of Zambia's cities through begging and petty theft, Nyirongo said.
But Zambian rights activists are expressing concern over the plan, questioning the government's decision to send the children to camps run by the Zambia National Service (ZNS), a military wing which specialises in agriculture and skills training.
"Our fear is that this programme may end up producing child soldiers," says Charity Konga, an activist working with children.
"The government should have taken the kids to social welfare camps or orphanages and not those run by the military," says Konga. But Nyirongo, the minister in charge of child welfare, dismisses such concerns, saying that the street children are not being drafted into the military.
"There shall be no military training for the children. We are just using their camps and facilities," says Nyirongo. The children are expected to spend 18 months in camps where they will be trained in various skills such as tailoring, farming and carpentry before they are resettled. There are more than 600,000 AIDS orphans in Zambia. Most of them are living on the streets and engaging in crime to survive, according to government statistics.
"We support the government effort to remove the street kids because they pose a big security threat to the nation," said Kelvin Sampa, director of the National Initiative for Civic Awareness (NICA), a non-governmental organisation working with street kids. But Sampa is also urging the government to introduce tough laws to deal with parents who allow their children to live on the streets.
"Our research has shown that not all street children are orphans. Actually, most of them have parents," Sampa said.
On the outskirts of Lusaka stands one of Zambia's biggest orphanages where over 500 orphans are being offered free education and other skills as part of other efforts to reduce the number of street kids.
Bishop John Mambo, who runs the Nyamphande orphanage, says the government must also deal with the high incidence of sexually-transmitted diseases among street kids.
"It's a big health problem. Most of them are sick and that is why we have organised medical screening and treatment," said Nyirongo.
The programme is expected to cost two billion kwacha (about 420,000 dollars), which is expected to be financed by government and aid donors.
One of Africa's poorest nations, Zambia is struggling with the AIDS pandemic that is blanketing southern Africa. The UN AIDS agency says there are 630,000 AIDS orphans in Zambia where close to 17 percent of adults are living with HIV and AIDS.