Shanghai sends street kids home

Shanghai (CNS) – In 2012, Shanghai will be rounding up its street urchins and sending them home as part of a campaign to smash syndicates kidnapping and selling children, announced its civil affairs bureau on March 1. It will also offer aid and guidance to street kids who are vulnerable potential victims.

The bureau expects streets will be free of wandering kids by the end of this year.

Local authorities will conduct constant monitoring to identify and locate street kids, and immediately contact their parents or other guardians.

However, the bureau emphasized that more essential measures should be introduced to address the social roots of the street kid phenomenon, including the creation of more spaces in vocational education, providing sound social security, and alleviation of populations in poverty.