Their numbers are shrinking, but sinister jobless adults pose a new threat in Mongolia.

ULAN BATOR-On a snowy night with temperatures dipping to a bone-chilling minus 26 degrees, a manhole cover was pushed open on a street in this capital city, releasing warm steam. Four teenage boys then climbed out of the hole.

They are known as ``manhole children,'' street children who seek warmth from underground water pipes. They use cardboard boxes as their homes.

They left home for various reasons, including poverty and domestic violence. Although reports say the number of manhole children has declined in recent years, new problems have surfaced, including homeless adults driving the children out of their only shelter in the brutal Mongolian winter or forcing them to commit crimes.

``Not many grown-ups knew of this location,'' says Sukhbold, a 14-year-old who gulps down the soup offered by staff members of the Verbist Care Center, a Catholic child welfare organization. ``But recently, grown-ups have been coming here and beating up the children or demanding cash from them.''

According to local police, unemployed homeless adults are increasingly ordering street children to steal money or bring food. The children are assaulted or thrown out of into the cold if they refuse to obey.

For many of these children, they have nowhere to go.

Sukhbold, for example, says he left his family home three or four years ago when his stepfather began to physically abuse him. He has been living underground for about a year, and spends his days collecting empty cans for change and buying bread with the little money he makes.

Sukhbold and the three other teenage boys say their underground residence offers them protection from the harsh elements.

The heat from hot-water pipes connected to thermoelectric power plants produces underground temperatures of at least 20 degrees.

The nation's economic struggles have been particularly harsh on rural areas. More adults are coming to Ulan Bator seeking work, but they often remain jobless, and some end up fighting the manhole children for the warmth of the underground shelters.

No one knows the full extent of the problem of homeless adults abusing the children, partly because the young homeless do not report such cases to the police.

Badamkhand, a senior inspector with the community policing division of the Mongolian national police agency, said: ``Homeless adults and children living in manholes are responsible for about 2 percent of crimes committed nationwide. About 70 percent of them are thefts.''

Since the nation's democratization in 1990, Mongolia's rapid economic liberalization has widened the economic gap among its people. The nation's first non-Communist government, which formed in 1996, implemented drastic economic reforms that led to serious inflation.

Exacerbating matters, severe snowstorms in 2000 and 2001 devastated the nation's main industry of nomadic stock breeding, slashing the number of livestock from 33.6 million in 1999 to 23.9 million in 2002.

Many nomadic people lost their only source of income. And basic necessities like electricity, water, and medical care have worsened in rural Mongolia since the days of the Communist government.

Currently, nearly 40 percent of the population lives in poverty, earning less than 20,000 togrog (about 2,000 yen) a month.

In a country of about 2.6 million, more than 35,000 people are officially registered as unemployed. But some say up to 175,000 people are actually without jobs, and many of them are streaming into the nation's capital. In the past two years, Ulan Bator's population has increased by almost 200,000, according to official data.

The government has no statistics on how many homeless people are living underground, but police and child welfare agencies estimate that 50 to 100 children live underground in Ulan Bator.

But thanks mainly to the efforts of the government and foreign aid organizations, the number of street children has been decreasing and more aid has been provided.

The Verbist Care Center, the organization that fed Sukhbold and the other teens, distributes meals for street children once a week.

Mongolian police have set up temporary shelters for homeless children. At one such shelter, 28 children aged 3 to 17 played in a large room.

An 11-year-old girl came up and introduced herself in Japanese: ``Konichiwa. Watashi no namae wa Ariungerel desu (Hello, my name is Ariungerel).''

She said she learned Japanese in her elementary school.

Asked how she ended up in this shelter, Ariungerel explained that after her parents divorced, her father, whom she had been staying with, was sent to prison. Ariungerel was supposed to have stayed at an aunt's house, but she ran away because she was bullied there. Police took her in when she was found wandering the streets.

Mongolian police typically spend two weeks trying to identify these children, contact their families or find a facility where they can live.

Children like Ariungerel, who need protection from their relatives, are placed in child welfare institutions like those run by the Verbist Care Center.

About 120 children now live at Verbist Care Center's facility. One resident, 17-year-old high schooler named Amarsanaa, lived as a manhole child for two years with his sister, who is a year younger.

When his father became an alcoholic, the family fell into heavy debt and eventually lost their home. Now that Amarsanaa has been taken into the center with his sister, he has shown he is a bright student who favors math and computer science.

``I want to go to college, learn economics and be an academic,'' Amarsanaa says eagerly.

To ensure that homeless children do not return to the streets, the police keep an eye on the children. About 1,150 children are currently being cared for at about 20 welfare facilities, from where they go to school or receive vocational training.

Foreign aid agencies donate about 200 million togrog, or about 20 million yen, every year via a governmental child welfare committee that distributes the aid to each children's facility, according to an official of the committee. In addition, foreign nongovernmental organizations offer financial help directly to facilities in need.

The number of homeless children has decreased over the past years. In 1997, when divorce cases and unemployment were the highest in the past 10 years, an estimated 3,700 children were living near underground pipes in Mongolia, mainly in Ulan Bator. That number fell to 200 in 2001, governmental officials say, due to the establishment of the protective facilities. The number of street children now is estimated at between 50 and 100.

But there is little hope for any improvement in the stagnant economy, which is the root cause of the homeless problem. While the number of children taken into protective custody has risen, the number of orphans has also shot up from 3,892 in 1999 to 5,435 in 2004.

``With so many children's facilities, it may look like the problem has been solved,'' says Javzankhuu, a senior officer at the Mongolian National Committee for Children. ``But that is not the case. With the shrinking economy and the continued breakdown of the family, the problem of manhole children will not go away.''(IHT/Asahi: March 5,2005)