Residents of Nyangusu town have asked the police to investigate and bring to light a group of men alleged to lure school girls into early parenthood with cheap food.
In an open meeting, the residents alleged the group consisting of some touts and drivers bought mattresses and kept them in abandoned houses within Nyangusu town where they sneak in with minors in the cover of darkness.
“The touts leave their young lovers in the abandoned rooms with scanty food as they lock them inside and return in the evening with a variety of food like groundnuts, bread and chips,” said one elder.
The residents blamed the Nyumba Kumi groups in the area for colluding with the matatu touts who pay some fees to keep them under cover.
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Truth resurfaced when one of the girls was prevailed upon by her parents to explain where she had been staying for one week without going to school.
It was at that time when she explained how she had been cohabiting with a matatu driver in one of the lodgings in the town.
“When he could not pay the rent we were kicked out of the bar and forced to live behind the abandoned rooms in the backstreets,” she said.
When Education News visited the incomplete abandoned houses at the outskirts of the town, traces of old mattresses, utensils and sacks were seen inside the stinking wet rooms with leaking roofs.
“When the man who brought me here went missing for four days I decided to return home and apologize to my parents,” said a grade five girl who identified herself as Ventina.
Most residents who spoke to Education News blame poverty for the behavior of the young girls running away from their homes to throng towns for food.
By our reporter
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