KARACHI, Aug 1: Speakers at a meeting on Thursday said that there were over 10,000 street-children in the city and majority of them were vulnerable to exploitation, sexual and other kinds.

They were speaking at the premier of “Street Souls” — a documentary on street children of Karachi produced by Azad Foundation. The event was held at the Karachi Press Club.

Representatives of the foundation, speaking on the occasion, said that usually children belonging to broken families left their homes. Majority of them were severely beaten by their parents /step-parents.

They said most of them left their homes between the age of 8 and 10. They said that soon after leaving their homes such children felt insecure and had to take refuge among street- children in different areas of the city.

They said that they had carried out researches in three districts — central, east and south — of the city which showed that almost 50 per cent of street-children were found in district South.

They said that most of these children were sexually abused by older boys of their own groups of street children and a large number them alleged that they had been sexually abused by the police.

They said that the majority of street-children were addicted to the drugs including a glue that comprised drug components. A large number of these children washed and cleaned vehicles on the roads or did other odd jobs.

The largest group of street-children, they said, consisted of Bengali children, followed by the Burmese, Punjabis and Urdu speaking children.

They said that the foundation planned to provide health facilities to these children through a mobile dispensary soon and the provision of other facilities and services such as legal aid and education at a later stage was also being considered.

They explained that the large number of Afghan children seen picking up recyclable objects from the garbage dumps in the city were not street-children as they were helping their families and returned to their homes after work.

They pointed out that some studies carried out in Lahore and Peshawar had put the number of street-children in those cities at around 10,000 and 3,000 respectively. Rana Asif, Naveed Hassan, Itfan Maqbool and others spoke on the occasion.

“Street Souls”, a 15-minute documentary on the issue, was also screened. The documentary showed these children living under bridges, on footpaths and around shrines. It also showed scenes of child beating at homes, in schools and Madaris and on the streets.

The documentary also contained an interview of a police official who denied that policemen sexually abused these children.