Children biggest victims of Covid-19 lockdown, says UNICEF
Deputy Minister of Social Development Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu says Covid-19 pandemic has led to an increase in hunger among children.
The Social Development Department launched Child Protection Week in Benoni, east of Johannesburg on Sunday.
Bogopane-Zulu said children who depend on school nutrition programmes for their daily meals were left without food during the lockdown.
“We were dealing with a disease that nobody knows anything about and we closed the schools and sent the children home so that we can be able to get our head around it. But what did we sent them home to?
“We sent them back to a home where there is no food because the school nutrition programme did not follow a child home because you eat at school and now the schools is not there so that increased hunger amongst children as a form of protection,” she said.
“But we also closed the Early Childhood Development Centres and the four meal that the children receive is no longer there,we used the ECDC to fight malnutrition and amongst children and Covid-19 showed us flames because we could not do that now,” says Bogopane-Zulu.
She warned that parents are failing to protect children at home.
“A lot of jobs became reductant ad we celebrate digitalisation, so the world changed at the snap of a finger and parents knew little about technology and children because we don’t have to teach them. They bullied others, they watched programmes that were supposed to have classification and parental guidance.
“They went and watched pornography and practised it on each other as siblings because as parents during lockdown we had to deal with their own co-existence at the expense of children,”
Meanwhile, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) says their report has noted how children were subjected to severe abuse under lockdown.
UNICEF’s Christine Muhigana said the report shows that the mental health of children has been hard hit.
“The UNICEF report, Protecting Children from Violence in the Time of Covid-19 noted how lockdowns placed children at increased risk of emotional abuse, physical violence and neglect when they are behind closed doors and away from schools.
“Children with disabilities, those in alternative care, children on the move and those with no parental care have been the hardest hit.”
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