TEHRAN -- The Managing Director of the Welfare Organization for the Socially Disabled, Mo'tamedi, said: "The number of street children in Iran is between 20-30,000. The organization has been gathering some 30 children a day since May 10 and bringing them to pertinent centers." Talking to Iran's Culture Radio, Mo'tamedi stressed that the leading causes of home abandonment are parental neglect, divorce, addiction, unemployment, parental interdiction, death of either parent and marriage of the surviving parent to another and, lately, contraction of the disease AIDS by either or both parents. AIDS, he added, is now the main disaster disease.

He said the problem of runaway or street children as a social disorder is often confronted in two ways. "The unacceptable way is by treating them roughly and the other is by looking at the problem from the religious standpoint." Mo'tamedi said the unsympathetic treatment received by children in their families drives them away from their homes. "The runaway child is the child who does not find home as a peaceful place for growing up and so he leaves his house without his parents' permission.

The head of the Center for Street Children's Welfare under the Governor-General's Deputy for Social and Cultural Affairs, Nasser Alikhani, said: "There are three centers to house Tehran's street children. The active ones, the Imam Khomeini Relief Committee and the Iran Welfare Organization, are doing their best to give homes to these street children." Alikhani stressed that the separation of family members can be traced to the cultural and emotional gap between children and parents.

He said parents these days are too busy in various activities that they neglect the affairs and needs of their children. He said parent's financial problems should not go in the way of their responsibilities toward their children.