The Cause And Effects Of Street Hawking On Children In Maiduguri -By Charity Ishaya

INTRODUCTION

Street hawking refers to the act of selling items or goods in the street. In Nigeria hawkers could be seen on the streets of major cities of Nigeria. And majority are young people mostly teenagers and the children both male and female. Street hawking as the act of canvassing for the scale of items carried by the hawkers along the street from house to house or in the public places in the town. Hawking is the method of sourcing for income and thus financially empowering the seller or actual owner of the goods. It is widely believed that these hawkers make profit, as they do not spend money on renting shops to display and sell their goods.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Poverty can lead to child hawking
Lack of parental care can lead to hawking

Lack of sponsorship can lead this to hawking

Child hawking exposes the child to a lot of hazards like sexual defilement ,sexual assaults.

Neglects and threat of punishment for speaking out as exemplified above.
Sadly, the trends for the children to be involved in hawking are increasing. Children are sent out to hawk by parents or guardians to earn money for the family so as to make ends meet.

These children hawkers are then exposed to dangers and ricks and in some cases they are hit and killed by reckless drivers. There are also some cases where children are abducted and use for ritual purpose. Girl hawkers have been known to have been rapes by either their male customers or strangers many of these children are not in schools and even when they attend schools, they have little time to work on after school, assignment or even time to rest from the long hours at school.

Street hawking have been trickled at different levels but this trends is like a system of diseases but the main diseases is poverty. And this issues is not properly treated many of these children hawk until late and at times could be punished for not selling all the wares given. However, some of the after effect on the children hawkers are that it exposes the children in sexual abuse and in some times they may end up been infected with HIV/AIDS virus.

The children when abducted are at times trafficked and they end up being used as a slaves or commercial sex workers. Some of them end up joining on the streets, the girls could be attracted to robbery gangs and prostitution rings. And the boys could become pretty thieves and some end up as armed rubbers

Hawking is one of the debilitating factors that affect the socio-emotional development of the children involved and the society at large in the late childhood, stage (6-10 years) it is the age of primary school. It Is the time children socialise with each other in the school and in the environment in which they find themselves, they interact with one another and make friends with their mates. Teenagers, especially the female folks are exposed through hawking to be sexually aware too easily in life. In attempt to sell their wares teenage female mingles with the touts in the motor parks and in the streets some of the teenage hawkers are lured into sexual relationship that will result into pregnancy, some of the female hawkers may become promiscuous following exposure through hawking as a result of this fames may drop hawking and resort prostitution some children hawkers learn the act of smoking cigarette and other drugs because of the interactions with people of questionable characters. Smoking and drugs have physiological, economically and low self-esteem

This act of the hawking to which children are exposed or subjected to appear to exploit and harm them in various ways physically, soci-emotionally, mentally, morally or by blocking their access to education. In the regards of the above, when a child assume the occupation of a parent, like hawking, in a tender age it will not give him access to education . Children involved in street hawking are frosted. Suffer from role conflict have low occupational income like hawking has enslavement, prostitution, trafficking, forced into illegal activities and exposes to hazardous environment of children below the age of eighteen years (18 years) hawking is a general condition and human problem that should concern all and sundry. Therefore individuals’ families cooperate in the controlling hawking in our society.

Charity Ishaya, Level 3 mass communication student of Borno state university.