Kano-based Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Hope Foundation, has decried persistent street hawking by young women in the metropolitan local governments, saying the situation is worrisome.
Coordinator of the organisation, Mrs Naja’atu Ahmed, said on Wednesday in Kano that the situation called for concern and urgent action.
She explained that although the state had banned street hawking and the efforts by Kano Hisbah to ensure compliance, the menace had continued unabated.
Ahmed said that the young girls’ parents were largely to be blamed for the persistence, as they had turned them into money-making machines.
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“The greed by parents of the girls makes them stick to their ways despite series of warnings by concerned authorities and civil society organisations.
“Many organisations working on the welfare of the girl-child had carried out advocacies in the identified areas where most of these girls came from.
“It is to our knowledge too that Kano Hisbah usually called the parents of these girls and warned them, whenever they arrested the girls on the streets,” she added.
The coordinator also said that many NGOs had empowered the girls’ mothers to be self-reliant and sustain their children.
She stressed that there was absolute need for religious and community leaders to intervene and bring an end to the scourge.
The act, she said, had made the vulnerable girls targets of rape and other social vices, yet their influx rate was still alarming.
Ahmed, however, appealed to civil society organisations not to relent in their massive advocacies to bring an end to the menace and save the girls. (NAN)