Officials in the Pegu Division town Prome were forced into action after a protest broke out on 16 December against the local government’s neglectful treatment of a young child who they claimed had been sold and forced to beg for money.
Activists and civil society members rallied through the town carrying the four-year-old girl before marching to the Department of Social Welfare where they demanded the authorities take the girl into care.
The case has perplexed the small town. The young girl was believed to have been abandoned by her mentally handicapped mother, before being abducted and sold into a family who then made her beg in the streets.
She is now under the care of Prome authorities.
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