Parliamentary Forum on Children Starts Campaign Against Orphanage Homes.
MPs have called for a phase-out of orphanage homes, saying they cause a lot of damage to children; thus calling for the promotion of family and community-based care.
MPs are concerned with the rising cases of parents abandoning their children.
According to MP for Terego West Joel Leku, cases of parents abandoning children have increased across the country due to the resurgence of household poverty. Thus calling on poor men to forget about sex instead of filling the country with children they can’t look after them.
He made the remarks during a press briefing at Parliament where of members of Uganda Parliamentary Forum for Children together with Child’s Foundation that is leading calls on child care reforms by decampaigning orphanage centers for family based care.
Margaret Makokha (WMP Namayingo) the Chairperson Uganda Parliamentary Forum for Children also spurred at fellow MPs who impregnate girlfriends and abandon their offspring.
She warned that the forum will not hesitate to make public the names of the perpetrators if they don’t abandon the practice of abandoning their children.
Last year the speaker of parliament Anita Among threatened to name and shame male MPs who abandon their lovers with their offspring, a vice that has seen women flock to Parliament pleading for her intervention. However, Bukholi North MP Stephen Baka said MPs shouldn’t be the only group pointed out because the vice of abandoning children is global and shouldn’t be treated as a reserve for lawmakers in Uganda.
The parliamentary forum on children affairs started on advocacy for a policy shift to reduce the number of children fostered in orphanage homes saying children growing in institutional care are deprived parental care and subjected to physical, psychological, emotional and social harm with consequences that last for a lifetime.
MPs together with Child’s i Foundation cited a case study of Tororo district where all orphanage homes have been phased out for family based care. They believe NGOs which support orphans should support them from their extended families instead of institutional care where they can’t find parental love and care.
