Judge castigates mums who forced their children into the streets to beg

THREE women from Epworth who forced their children into the streets to beg for food and money yesterday escaped jail after the court wholly suspended a 30-day term of imprisonment it had imposed on each of them.

Agnes Mandaza (30), Nyasha Simango (22) and Revai Bhatisani (38) were convicted on their own pleas of guilty to contravening the Child Protection Act, when they appeared before magistrate Ms Anita Tshuma.

The women blamed their actions on poverty bedevilling their families.

It is an offence under the Child Protection Act to  force children to beg for food on the streets.

Ms Tshuma wholly suspended three years each for the trio on condition they do not commit a similar offence within that period.

She castigated the trio's behaviour, which she described as cruel.
Ms Tshuma said the three were unfit to be mothers and warned they risked going to jail if they committed a similar offence before three years lapsed.

Prosecutor Ms Francesca Mukumbiri told the court that on February 4 the police conducted a clean-up exercise to remove homeless people from the Harare's central business district.

The court heard that Mandaza was begging on the streets in the company of her three children aged 14, 10 and eight.

Bhatisani was also arrested while begging for money with her four children aged 15, nine, five and nine months, while Simango was conducting the ‘'business'' in the company of her two-year-old child.

They were all arrested at the intersection of Samora Machel Avenue and Leopold Takawira Street and their children were taken to the Social Welfare Department.

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