A court in Uganda has sentenced over 100 women to one month of community service each after they admitted to sending their children to go beg in the capital city, Kampala.
The court has also prohibited the women from coming back to the city and directed them to be sent back to their home district of Napak in northern Uganda, according to Daily Monitor, a newspaper reported.
A state-owned New Vision newspaper had alleged that the women begged for leniency, with several people saying they were widows and single mothers respectively.
The judge in the case, Magistrate Edgar Karakire, was quoted by the Daily Monitor to have said:
“I have heard their cries and a [jail] sentence would be unsuitable. I have to enforce a deterrent sentence…I will sentence them to community service. However, in default, you will serve one month of imprisonment.”
Ordering kids to solicit or beg for alms is against Uganda’s child protection laws and there’s a maximum sentence of six months.
The women had been arrested in January during a crackdown to evict beggars from the capital, ahead of three international summits that were hosted in the capital.
The children were taken to the Masulita Children’s Village in central Uganda, which hosts liberated children.
