The Gambian Immigration Department has deported 64 street children, locally known as “almudus”, who were rounded up in Banjul and Serrekunda and identified as Senegalese citizens.
Another few, identified as Gambians, were being kept in detention, helping the department with investigations, immigration sources confirmed Friday.
According to Superintendent Olimatou Jammen-Sonko, spokesperson of the Gambian Immigration, the children, who are all boys, aged between 10 and 17, were like vagabonds, noting that they were living by themselves, as most of them slept in the mosques and under verandas.
Jammen-Sonko pointed out that some of them were being used as child labourers at the beach-side, paid low wages while most of them were not physically healthy and were causing nuisance within the communities.
She disclosed that all the 64 children are natives of Kabada, Njamakuta and Medinaunas, in Senegal and were handed over to the Senegalese authorities at the border.
“From now on, teenagers travelling to Gambia without parents will not be allowed in and the department will put up all measures to stop the influx of children into the Gambia,” the spokesperson said. Panapress
