Students from Shenzhen exploited to smuggle goods across border

Cross-boundary pupils are being pestered by grey-market traders into smuggling goods across the border, a social service group recently revealed.

In one case, according to International Social Service (ISS), a bus nanny put cellphones into the bags of all her young passengers, who were later caught by Customs officers.

This emerged from a survey of problems faced by children who travel from Shenzhen to Hong Kong to attend school.

Cheung Yuk-ching, director of the ISS cross-boundary service programme, said there had been "quite a few" such cases where students were caught smuggling electronic goods for parallel traders and bus nannies.

"Younger students are not aware of the problem as some of their parents or strangers put them up to it. They do not know how to refuse," said Cheung. "But some secondary students were tempted by cash rewards given to them if they brought laptops across the border."

More than 80 per cent of 350 teachers interviewed by ISS for the survey said more resources were needed to help such pupils. More than a third of the teachers said they needed more safety awareness education.