Impacts of hawking on youths in Cameroon
 | |
| CHILD HAWKING VEGETABLE |
The effects of hawking affect the girl child more than any other group of hawkers in Cameroon. There are negative and positive effects of hawking
What is hawking
Hawking is the act of carrying goods from place to place for sale. It equally includes setting a small store along the road site during the night or in the morning. This is common in Many African Countries including Cameroon.
Upon arrival or departure from Buea mile 17 motor park, Mutengene Roundabout, Hospital roundabout Bamenda, Douala and other towns in Cameroon the things that catch your attention immediately are the shabbily dressed under-aged children, adults and women hawking various kinds of goods. One can always hear their usual outcry as “bread bread, boiled eggs boiled eggs, bitter cola bitter cola bobolo bololo”. These are hawkers, they rang from children to adults, male and female. Below are the impacts of hawking on youths in Cameroon.
Also read; Impacts of Television on youths in Cameroon
Negative effects include
C) Sexual abuse:
This
is one of the common challenge a child face while hawking. This is
because in addition to the stress of hawking and trying to cope with
school, she is also exposed to all forms of abuse while on the street,
bandits take advantage of her situation to rape and assault them, this
could lead to unwanted pregnancies and contacting of sexually
transmitted diseases and even emotional torture. For example, the case
in Eseka in the centre region of Cameroon where an eleven-year
old
girl was raped by a motor bike rider on the 15th July 2018 in broad
daylight. This child happens to be hawking what is locally called
“fulerri”.
There
are laws in place that should protect children from this practice but
the problem is the law is not enforced. Parents and guardians are even
unaware of the dangers they expose their wards and children to and the
fact that they are breaking the law by doing such. There are little or
no sensitization orientations to this effect. The government’s approach
to this menace is lackluster and these children are left to the mercy of
their fate.
The
world needs to speak out on this, relevant international bodies like
UNICEF have a part to play to impress and put pressure on these
governments to take serious action to protect children from being
exposed to the dangers of street hawking.
B) Risk of accident:
Hawking
in the busy street where vehicles and motor bikes run high speed would
expose a child to the danger of automobile accidents, and they also risk
being kidnapped for rituals and human trafficking, if it’s a girl child
she could end up being sold out to the child prostituting.
C) Inadequate time to study:
For those children that are in school already, their guardians always sent them to hawk before going to school and after school hours, they have to wake up very early and sleep late, this negatively affects their psychology, creates room for less seriousness and lack of interest in school work, difficulty in learning and thereby underachieving as a pupil/student that would eventually lead to dropping out of school even before having the basic education and this in the long run is detrimental to the society, only a few of these children can withstand the stress of this practice.
D) Traffic congestion:
The
risks attached to street trading are quite high. The person that is
hawking on the road is exposed to danger of being hit by a moving
vehicle. Also, street hawking poses a risk to other road users. A driver
may end up hitting another vehicle in the process of avoiding hawkers
running after a moving vehicle to catch up with a customer.
E) Sale of bad or expired goods;
A lot of stolen, bad and expired products
are being sold in traffic and road sides. Even if the customer
discovers, it must have been too late. It is difficult to trace hawkers
to any specific address. Therefore, customers are always at the risk of
buying fake goods losing their money and the product at the same time.
F) Fall in tax revenue to the government
Moving from one street to
another trading is an informal sector of an economy. Generally, hawkers
don’t pay taxes. It is very difficult for the Government to track
hawkers to tax them in their business activities since they do not have
any specific point where they set up their business. Most of them too
are living hand to mouth so they don’t account somewhere that the
Government can track them.
Even
though the disadvantages of hawking are so alarming especially the girl
child and generally on all hawkers, that may even need to be regularize
by the state, there are equally some advantages as far as hawking
Positive effects of hawking
A) It is less costly to start any hawking business;
The
government of Cameroon encourages entrepreneurship but unfortunately
our youths who are willing to start a business find it difficult to
raise the initial capital. The cost of renting a shop alone is so high
that an average budding entrepreneur cannot afford to rent one. Some
documents needed to be formalized before starting which took a lot of
time. Therefore, instead of doing nothing as a lack of funds as the
reason for not doing anything, some of these street-smart individuals
consider street hawking as an option. This has worked for many of them.
Some of the shop owners today started their businesses through street
hawking. Had it been they didn’t start at all, they wouldn’t have been
where they are today. The money they would have tied down in renting a
shop and not being able to buy inventories were used for the purchase of
low cost inventories. Since these people enjoy quick turn-over, it is
easy for street hawkers to quickly sell, make profit and replenish their
stocks. With street hawking, it is easy to start with little capital
and with little inventory.
C) Street hawking equips our youths with entrepreneurship skills:
If
you want to see how people hustle to earn their living, just go to
towns like BUEA, DOUALA BAMENDA YAOUNDE and other towns of Cameroon at
main roads street. You will see how young boys and girls are running
after vehicles to make a sale, they learn and know how to strategically
position themselves in a place where they can easily make sales. Also,
they know their target customers. When you see a person selling bread,
before you know what is happening, another person selling drinks will
approach you. At their young age, they know how to manage working
capital so that they will not just remain in the business; they make
savings that will help them secure their own shops.
D) Street hawking reduces crimes:
The
fact that these young men and women are engaged in productive
activities, they are less susceptible to crimes. As the saying goes, an
idle man is the devil’s workshop. In fact, this is my major concern
about the banning of street hawking. It is not that I totally support
street hawking. But with the current level of unemployment in the
country, we may need to do whatever we can to encourage
entrepreneurship. If those people who are willing to work are now being
pushed out from their means of livelihood, this will heighten the
pressure that is already on ground. And this may not help our economy.
E) Street hawking reduces inflation:
Although
street hawkers may seem insignificant when compared with the level of
activities that take place within our economy, they still influence the
pricing of some consumer goods. With street trading, you don’t have any
overheads to pass to the customers. Therefore, street traders can afford
to sell their merchandise at cheap prices. This provides options for
customers. The fact that sellers in the markets are aware of these
street sellers, they are forced to bring down their prices so that
customers will not turn to buying from street hawkers. You can virtually buy almost everything while on traffic on your way home from work.