HCM City hopes to reduce the number of homeless children by at least 95 percent from the current 1,450 by 2015, a city social affairs official said.
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"Up to 80 percent of homeless children in the city are from migrant families," Phan Thanh Minh, head of the Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs\' Child Care and Protection Office, said.
"[They] are highly vulnerable to labour and sexual exploitation."
Homeless children belonged to two categories: those living with their families on the street and those from outside the city working here and living on their own.
More than 600 such children were employed by small businesses.
Children aged 12-16 accounted for 83 percent of them with the rest being below 12.
More than 1,400 homeless children were helped to return home between 2004 and 2010.
During that period nearly 1,900 cases of child labour were also uncovered, with more than 1,600 freed from hard work and harmful work environments and sent home.
"Poverty and disagreements with their family are the major causes of children leaving their homes."
