…As child street hawking rises.
by Achadu Gabriel, Kaduna
Following the renewed bandits and terrorism attacks and activities across communities in Kaduna State and environments, more and more residents of the affected areas are vacating their houses to the metropolis – for fear of bandits and kidnapping.
The worse hit are owners and occupiers of personal houses built by families and retirees at the outskirts, who are forced to vacate their structures for ‘safer zones,’ arising from waves of escalating news of kidnapping in the state in recent times.
Areas mostly affected are Gonin Gora by Abuja Road, Romi, Sabon Tasha GRA, Ibrahim Yakowa Road (“New Road”), Maraban Rico outskirts and environs.
Most housing agents, who spoke to our correspondent, alluded to the fact that house agents work – which was going extinction shortly before the advent of insurgents in 2012/13 – has picked up widely, with increase in agents’ fees budding.
According to one Kasham Samuel, a house agent at Television Village, Kaduna, accommodation, which was at almost zero level scarcity, has bounced back fully with both tenants and landlords vacating their residents to them, while they go looking for save areas inside town.
“Long before now, there were no scarcities of accommodation as it used to be before 2012/13, because people have built their own personal houses and there were many vacant rooms for people to freely pay and enter without passing through us as agents.
“But now, many are out again looking for accommodations inside town; some are landlords themselves, while some are their tenants quitting their residents from bandits-prone zones and communities around Kaduna,” Mr Samuel (a.k.a Kakas) stated.
Similarly, apparently owing to increased hardships in most families due to harsh economic reality, the population of streets hawking children have increased in Kaduna State, Kaduna south inclusive.
Our correspondent, who monitored the situation, reported that from cock-crow till down, morning till night, streets, roads and motor parks are busy and parked full of under-aged children hawking one item or the other.
Groundnuts, corn, eggs are amongst other commodities being traded by children of mostly the very poor, from morning and night, exposing them to all sorts of dangers of abuses and accident risks.
Although, some residents attributed the increase also to schools vacation as the reasons, mostly families, however, ascribed the menace to hardship faced by patents due to hipper inflation.
Many families, who talked to our reporter in confidence, revealed that two square meals have become absolutely and extremely difficult to provide for their families on daily basis, making some children to volunteer to “go hawking” themselves.