In Apia, Samoa, children are used to win sympathy by some street vendors.
Parents are using their children as a bait to win people’s sympathy, says Security’s Officer, Aloi Perosi. “That’s why many of them are out here at a very late hour,” he says. “It’s not about selling goods. It’s about people feeling sorry for them and then giving them loose change. It’s about these parents playing with people’s emotions,” he said.
“My question to these parents is this, is your child’s life worth $2?”
“Can the lousy money you get from the hair pins your kids are selling buy their life back if they are struck by a car here?”
Street vendors as young as five years of age sleep on the cold tar-sealed streets when they cannot sell their wares, an investigation by the Samoa Observer has found. They are part of a growing group of young boys and girls who beg from customers at McDonald’s Family Restaurant late at night and in the early hours of the morning.
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