Eliminating child labour is key to development

Story: Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho
THE last Ghana Child Labour Survey (GCLS) 2001 conducted by the Statistical Service of Ghana and published in 2003, reveals that 39 per cent of an estimated population of 6.3 million Ghanaian children aged 5-17 years were engaged in economic activities classified as child labour.
According to the survey, 17 per cent of these child labourers (1,031,220) were below 13 years and more than 242,000 of them were engaged in hazardous child labour.
Ghana ratified the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Convention 182 at its 87th session in June 1999 with various interventions undertaken with support from the ILO- International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), by international and local NGOs.
International agencies such as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and International Organisation for Migration have also made positive efforts to address the problem.
All these have resulted in the development of policies and legislations and the implementation of actions in identifying, withdrawing and rehabilitating children in various Worst Forms of Child Labour (WFCL).
However, these efforts have not yet resulted or met the set goals.
It is against this background that the Virginia State University and the Leadership Advocacy for Women’s Advancement (LAWA) in collaboration with the Ledzekuku Krowor Municipal Directorate of Education organised a day’s workshop for over 190 girls education facilitators and guidance and counselling coordinators in the municipality to help curb child labour in the municipality.
The workshop was on the theme: “Excessive child exploitation: Measures to increase school participation in the lives of children living with other families”.
A lecturer from the Virginia State University, Dr Nana Derby, said she was inspired to undertake the project of re-uniting children with their parents as a way of ensuring that they got better care in terms of educational and health needs.
According to her, the project has so far united 320 children in the Central and Eastern regions where their parents are also given start-up capitals to ensure that they become self sufficient.
Another 80 children, she said, were being prepared to be re-united with their parents as part of the project, saying that so far, assemblymen and social welfare officers in districts where the project was on-going have been trained to monitor parents to ensure that they do not give their children out again.
The children, she said, have also been given uniforms and other educational materials and their school fees have been paid in full to ensure that they stay in school.
She was of the view that more needed to be done to help children in such situations as people especially the affluent in society see the issue of housemaids as societal practice which needed not to be broken.
According to her, she was disappointed in some organisations which although are supposed to be humanitarian in nature, see her idea of eliminating child labour in homes as breaking the country’s culture.
The Chairperson of LAWA Ghana, Mrs Sheila Minkah Premo, said the constitutional requirement of ensuring that school aged children were put in school should be enforced in the country so that they can go through formal basic education.
Also she called for the enforcement of the provision in the Children’s Act which enjoins parents to send their children to school.
Mrs Minkah Premo whose address was delivered by Mrs Barbara Ayesu also called on teachers to monitor parents to ensure that they did the right thing by sending their children to school and give them the required environment to study.
She also called on parents to desist from using children in performing hazardous task, saying that although the labour laws allowed children to work at age 15, it prevented them from doing hazardous work.
The Director of Education of the Ledzekuku Krowor Municipal Assembly (LEKMA), Mrs Rosetta Addison Sackey, said child labour was an issue that needed to be eliminated from communities and pointed out that it hindered the progress of the child.
The LEKMA educational directorate has put in place measures that would ensure that child labour was eliminated from the municipality and that children were given the needed education that they required to excel in life.
The Guidance and Counselling Coordinator, LEKMA, Mr Roland Takyi, who spoke to the participants on skills needed to identify children in child labour and how they can help such children, called on them to ensure that they collaborated with relevant government agencies such as the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service and other non-governmental and child rights agencies such as the Ark Foundation and the Child’s Right International to help the children.
According to him, due to some cultural practices, children are used in homes as house helps with the intention that they would be sent to school but such children end up not going to school or being used for chores that does not promote their well-being.
Some children, he said, were abused sexually, physically, emotionally and psychologically which sometimes go undetected.
As counsellors, he called on them to be observant, caring, sensitive to the children that they handled, saying that it was only when they opened-up to the children that they could confine in them.
Mr Takyi however told them to be on the lookout at all times, saying that sometimes, a single indicator such as a cut on a childs finger could not be used as a pointer to abuse.
The Greater Accra Regional Girls Educational Officer, Ms Gertrude Simpi Amuzu, called on the teachers to help in the campaign against the use of children as street hawkers so that they can have time to study their books.
She also called on the teachers to also encourage parents so that they allow the children to study.