Child labor and presidential largesse
WHILE there has been a drop in the numbers since 2015, there are still 23,855 children and adolescents working in the streets of Panama.
The figures come from the Comptroller General of the Republic and likely don’t include those involved in the sex trade.
According to the latest report there is a decrease of 2,855 compared to 2015, when the figure was 26,710. Most of them are between 15 and 17 years of age.
These are young people living in a country with the highest per capita income in Latin America where the trickle down effect is an SUV driver, on his way to lunch at a high end restaurant handing a few coins to a street kid at a traffic stop clutching a squeegee and a bottle of water.
It’s also a country where the blind folded lady who holds the scales of justice, seems unable to move with her feet trapped in a bowl of solidifying concrete. while over 40 thieves who have plundered the country’s coffers , live in luxurious retreats in other corners of the world.
Most of them had the benefits of expensive educations and family connections to ensure they ended up in jobs they were entitled to.
In addition to well paid sinecures the upper echelons even benefit from largesse from a presidential discretionary fund, to pay for essentials like lipo suction surgery.
Meanwhile the street kids do not have better job opportunities due to a lack of education, according to officials
In response, the government has announced it will focus on job training programs for young people 16 years and older.
The program will be operated by the National Vocational Training Institute
What remains to be seen is how much funding the program will receive. Hopefully it will exceed the presidential piggy bank which has disbursed some $25 million in the past year, but still has some way to go to pass the Martinelli secret handouts of over $55 million.
