Youths from street families in Eldoret town want the government to put in place ways through which they can obtain identity cards easily.
Speaking to the press on Thursday morning, the youths said it was hard to secure employment a without an identity card leaving them idle and poor in the streets.
“The reason we are just idle in these streets all day long is because we lack jobs to do in the town especially because most jobs especially casual ones need people with identity cards,” said Richard Sisia one of the young men from the street families.
The young men said that the reason most of them do not have identity cards is because of the complexity of the process of acquiring one especially the requirement of the parents identity card.
“Most of us are here because we have no parents and even those whose parents are still alive, you either don’t know of their whereabouts or some don’t want to see us. This makes it hard to get copies of our parents’ identity cards which is mandatory for one to acquire an ID,” David Simiyu a street dweller explains.
Their predicament has left them with few options with most of them dealing in scrap metal and plastics which they sell to dealers and jua kali artisans. The collecting they say is mostly done by small children leaving the rest idle. Others are rely on loading and unloading errands that come their way.
However, they say that these jobs don’t give enough money to fund their daily needs and fend the little children they take care of in their camp who cannot fend for themselves. They are therefore asking the government to help them acquire identity cards so as to be in a better position to get better jobs to sustain them.
“Recently, the NYS were recruiting youths from the public for kazi kwa vijana and the only qualification needed was having an identity card. Most of us were left out due to lack of identity cards.” Sisia added.