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Ugandan NGO rescues child labourers from trauma
2006-03-01 07:14:20
By Emmanuel Kihaule writing from Kampala
’’IT’S so painful to explain and I don’t want to recall the situation that I was in those years.’’
This is how Miiro Alpha describes the traumatic experiences she encountered as a child prostitute in the streets of Uganda’s capital, Kampala.
She has just turned 20 and still recalls the hardships she went three years ago in search of what she calls ’’means for survival’’.
She was forced to quit schooling at St. Denis Kijagolo Secondary School, as she had no one to pay for her school fees.
Her father died when she was just three years old. She came to know his face through some photos her kept at their Kawempe residential home.
Her mother, a tailor, could not pay for her education and at the same time take care of the other three children.
Two of her sisters are now married while her brother is in secondary school.
’’Life was miserable and sometimes we slept without eating anything,” she recalls.
’’I thought through selling my body I could earn enough money to be able to look after myself,’’ says Miiro.
’’Men of my grandfather’s age slept with me by paying little money. It was paining but I thought I had no alternative. I sometime ended up with no pay,’’ she explains.
The same life kept on repeating itself until when a friend came to inform her about the Uganda Youth Development Link (UYDEL) at Kalerwe in Kawempe, a suburb of Kampala.
This is an orphanage centre dealing with the rehabilitation of young people engaging in child labour, including prostitution.
’’At first I was reluctant to go to UYDEL because I thought no one would accept me and that instead of helping me, they would simply laugh at me,’’ she says.
However, with further persuasion she eventually accepted and was enrolled in a hairdressing course after counselling.
Upon graduation, she was given a hand drier as a resettlement kit.
’’Life has now changed and we’re at least able to generate some money for our upkeep. We would love to expand our business so as to get more customers,’’ she said with a smile.
Miiro is one of over two million Ugandan children engaged in child labour and other forms of exploitation due to, among other reasons, poverty and the HIV/Aids.
The International Labour Organisation Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (ILO/IPEC) estimates that about 250 million children globally are engaged in child labour of which 80 million are in Africa.
Uganda’s Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) says that in 2000/1 alone, there were about 2.7 million children engaged in child labour, which is almost 10 percent of the total population.
Such children are employed mainly in sugar plantations, commercial sexual exploitation, among many other dangerous occupations.
An Assistant Inspector of Police of the Child and Family Protection Unit of Mbale District, in Eastern Uganda, Grace Amongin, says that the most common types of child labour in Uganda are domestic work, serving in bars as barmaids during daytime and later in the night as prostitutes.
Others are smuggling across the borders, loading and off loading goods from trucks and stone crushing, among many activities.
She says that the war for the elimination of child labour in Uganda is largely impeded by the confusion between child labour and child work.
’’Parents’ ignorance in differentiating between child labour and child work plays a big role in this because they think that it’s normal to engage a child in such activities,’’ she says.
Hamid Kizito, Programme Coordinator of the Uganda Rural Development Media Communications (RUDMEC), says that the difference between the two depends on the dimensions and magnitude of the work in question.
RUDMEC is the NGO assigned by ILO to coordinate the whole process of elimination of child labour in Uganda in collaboration with other stakeholders.
Uganda is a signatory to the ILO Convention of the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour since 1999.
’’Child work is the one that enables a child to learn how to work and become a responsible member of the society. But the work shouldn’t affect the physical, moral, health or well-being of the child,’’ he explains.
He adds that the work should be the one that doesn’t stop the child from going to school and it also depends on the physical nature of the exercise because it’s supposed to be of a reasonable and proportionate size.
On the other hand, the official says that child labour is the exploitation of children when they are too young and in many circumstances they end up getting low payments or without payment at all.
He cites as an example in which some children serve as housemaids while fellow children of the same age in the household go to school leaving the former working at home.
However, Kizito admits that besides the difficulties in distinguishing between child labour and child work, the HIV/Aids has forced some children to work as labourers to support their siblings after the deaths of their parents.
In such circumstances, he advises that it is important for the employers to take into account the age of the children so as to give them work that won’t be detrimental to their mental and physical well-being.
Elizabeth Mabonga, a Probation and Social Welfare Officer, Mbale District, says the intention of fighting child labour was not to exempt the children from working.
’’Even the holy Bible and Quran insist that working is the value of humanity and that everyone must work,’’ she says.
She suggests that children should do some small tasks at home with supervision and that it is good they are encouraged by small gifts as appreciation of the little work they have done.
’’Work shouldn’t deprive a child time for playing or attending school with others though,’’ she insists.
When children are exploited under child labour, they grow up hating work as to them the latter is more of a punishment.
’’To my dismay no one has ever been charged of child labour in my district for all the years that I’ve been working as a probation and social welfare officer in Mbale,’’ she says.
Kizito says the community must be mobilised fighting child labour.
’’Though there is till confusion between child work and child labour but with time people are changing.
It’s a gradual process and over time people’s attitudes would change,’’ he concludes.
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