Editor,

RE: "Street children: Senators urge govt to take holistic, urgent action” (The New Times, March 25).

This is an issue that needs special attention. When reading this article, I thought about one component of the problem that needs to be urgently addressed as well.

Let’s talk about the "marines” in Nyabugogo. If you haven’t heard of those marines before, they are street children and adults who usually walk around cars—especially when the traffic jam is heavy. They look for cars with windows rolled down and grab whatever they can find including computers, phones, and jackets...basically anything.

They then run to the Nyabugogo River where technically you can’t run after them. This is obviously indeed the case since you can’t leave the car in the traffic jam and run after thieves anyways. This issue has escalated in all the city streets beyond Nyabugogo area.

While I was driving recently, I picked up the phone and called a friend. That’s when a young man came on my side of the car, snatched the iPhone 5s from my ear and vanished.

The motto operators, who were also there, ran after him but he could not be found since he knew the corners very well.

How can we really eliminate this problem? We should ask ourselves why someone chose to become a thief on streets. I am pretty sure that’s not how he had his career path designed as a young man growing up. He probably never got any guidance to brighten his future while he was young.

Do I think that taking the young children from streets to rehab center is enough? Absolutely not!

As an active citizen, this is what I propose as a solution. The only way to eliminate this scourge is institutionalizing a career guidance system countrywide.

I agree that we have done an excellent job in making quality education available to everyone by the 9 and 12 Year Basic Education initiatives; however, we must incorporate a career guidance system in every school in country to make sure those students are properly guided and have a defined career path.

Jean-Chrysostome Bikomeye