Rescued kids'' parents fell for empty promises

By Gladys Kalibbala

KAMPALA - He promised the parents he would enlist their children into 'his school'. But instead, he had other ideas. This is as unscrupulous as this real-life script can get.

Suspect Abby Byekwaso is on the run while his partner in crime, Lawrence Wasswa, is in police custody as investigations into a case of suspected child trafficking are under way.

Recently, eight children between the ages of six and 12, believed to have been trafficked, were rescued by local police from these two men.

Patrick Alinyo, the DPC for Kawempe in Kampala, said the children were rescued in Maganjo B and are said to have been collected from various parts of the country including Mbale, Butaleja, Rakai, Luwero and Buwenge.

When the police stormed the location where the children were being kept, Wasswa was immediately arrested – and is currently at Kawempe Police Station – while his accomplice managed to evade capture.

It is understood the fugitive, Byekwaso, is a teacher by profession and that he deceived a number parents in the mentioned areas that he owned a school where their children could get decent education.

But instead of registering the children at ‘his school’, he has been keeping them in two rented rooms in Maganjo B for reasons still unknown.

It is reported that Wasswa has been looking after one set of the eight children in one of the rooms and Byekwaso in the other.

According to area police, Byekwaso went ahead to solicit money from their unwitting parents as part of contribution to the schooling they were to get. Little did they know they were dealing with a fraudster.

The phony man found ways of making his apparent gesture of generosity plausible.

“He forged school reports which he gave out to parents in order to convince them that their children were studying,” explained DPC Alinyo.
 

Six of the eight rescued children are yet to be reunited with their families. (Credit: Gladys Kalibbala)

The DPC Alinyo visited the area where the children were being kept. (Credit: Gladys Kalibbala)

Forged documents

Once when police visited the school Byekwaso allegedly owned – from the parents’ point of view – the headteacher of Bright Vision Junior School Maganjo told police that suspect Byekwaso once taught at the school for only one term before being dismissed.

“We got complaints about him where he had made his own stamps for the school as well as other documents and we stopped him from teaching,” said Francis Senoga.

It was perhaps unsurprising to Senoga when police showed him school report cards bearing the name of his school that had been given to the parents of the rescued children.

Senonga identified the cards as forged documents.

Most of the recovered children had not stepped in school in over a year. They are: Mulira, 9; Arafat Kitayimbwa, 7; Faisal Waira, 12; Farouk Byekwaso, 7; Tadius Sanyu, 8 and nine-year-old Celestine Kyambadde.

By the time of writing this, two of them had been reunited with their respective families. Police set out to connect the remaining children with their loved ones as well.

Investigations into the matter continue.

On his part, Police’s Alinyo called on parents to be responsible with their children and desist from handing them to whoever gives them sweet promises.

“Parents should utilize government programmes like UPE where their children can get proper education without any worries,” he advised.

Reports from the ministry of education indicate that through the Universal Primary Education ((UPE) that started 18 years ago, Uganda has made significant progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MGD) target.

However amid this, many children, like the ones recently rescued, continue to be forced out of school for the wrong reasons – with or without their parents’/guardians’ knowledge.

According to police, trafficked children are at times forced into early marriages, armed conflicts, illegal activities, debt bondage, slavery, human sacrifice, human organ harvesting as wells as sex tourism, to mention but a few.

The Police Crime Report for 2011 indicates that a total of 69 cases of child trafficking were reported to police.

Globally, an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 men, women and children are trafficked across borders annually and 50% of these are children.