week12: Problems, Unemployment, The youth and drug Addiction, Growth of urbanization, Urban poverty, Housing Problems, Homelessnes and Begging

Homelessness and Begging 

About 15% of the population of Ethiopia lives in urban areas. With growth of urbanization, many social problems have emerged. The problem of urban slums, increasing poor quality of life and poverty, shortage of basic social services such as clean water, electricity, communications facilities, housing, etc, and the growing rate of crimes and deviance. Urban slums are centers for undesirable social behaviors such as commercial sex work, theft, robbery, drug trafficking and use, sanitation problems, among others. With the growing number of urban population, access to good housing is becoming increasingly problematic. Studies indicate that many urban people live in substandard houses and many more even lack accesses to housing. 

The health and living conditions of these categories of people is very appalling. The street children and adolescents are often among the risk groups to contracting STIs including HIV/AIDS. They lack access to basic social and health services. The main means of making a living for these categories of people is usually begging and sometimes engage in commercial sex. Begging itself has become a major social pathology in some large urban centers.

Governments in developed and undeveloped countries alike these days face the mounting social problem of unemployment. In Ethiopia, too, unemployment has become one of the major social problems. The unemployed are those who currently in search of a gainful job and are dependent on somebody else for their living. There are other categories like the underemployed; these are those who are engaged in a job that does not match their level of expertise or training (Team of Experts, 2000). 

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