STD exposes plight of migrant children

The poor living and school conditions of the children of migrant workers hit the spotlight again on Thursday after it was announced that a 6-year-old girl in Central China had contracted a sexually transmitted disease.

Doctors are still puzzled how the girl, who they referred to by the alias Qianqian, contracted gonorrhea.

On March 1, teachers at the Jinbeier Kindergarten, a private boarding kindergarten in Zhuzhou, Hunan province, found that the girl was ill.

An initial police probe ruled out foul play at the kindergarten after a mandatory screening of the school's 16 staff members found that none was a carrier of the disease.

The city's education authorities have ordered a probe into the cause of the disease, and they are cooperating with health authorities to determine if other children have also been infected.

Kang Naning, head of the kindergarten, said none of Qianqian's 40 classmates has shown symptoms of gonorrhea.

Meanwhile, the police investigation indicated that the girl was not sexually molested.

Qianqian's parents are migrant workers from rural Hunan.

Although she was staying at a boarding school, Qianqian left the school's premises after enrolling, and stayed with her aunt at a migrant workers' dorm at a local garment factory.

Qianqian's aunt was her primary caregiver until she was old enough to be checked into a full-time boarding kindergarten on Feb 13.

The girl's mother has only visited her once, but her aunt took Qianqian from the school on two Sundays to spend the night at the garment factory dorm.

School unlicensed

Though the cause remains unknown, the kindergarten has come under fire for operating without a license for more than a year, defying a shutdown order from the city's education bureau.

"We ordered it to be shut down as early as March 14, 2011, but we cannot enforce the order unless we go to court," said Zhang Guangming, head of the education bureau of Hetang district, which supervises the kindergarten.

"All we could do was to notify the public that the school was unlicensed," Zhang said.

The government notice, however, was ignored.

There are an estimated 10,000 preschool-aged children of migrant workers concentrated in Hetang district, but the district's sole public kindergarten can only enroll 200 children.

About 120 children attend Jinbeier Kindergarten.

Many migrant workers recently said they would not know where to send their children if unlicensed private kindergartens like Jinbeier were forced to close.

Kang, the head of Jinbeier Kindergarten, said she refused to close because she started the kindergarten after being laid off and she had not yet seen a return on her investment.

"For another thing, the 120 children would have nowhere to go once the kindergarten was shut down, and their parents had expressed hope that the school could keep running," Kang added.

Only one of the eight teachers at Jinbeier is certified, officials said, forcing them to consider how a license could be issued to such a substandard school.