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Africa: Child labour increasing in spite of constant discouragement
2006-09-08 09:12:20
By Walusanga Ndaki
This lady who resides in Dar es Salaam is on holiday in her home region, Kigoma. On going back to her place of residence, she takes with her a class five girl from her poor relatives on promises that she would make sure that she went through the rest of her primary school in the city under her care.
As common as it has been, soon as the two arrive in the city, the lady immediately turns the girl into one of her housemaids at her sprawling residential farm running an array of projects such as poultry, livestock keeping, etc.
Initially, the young girl tries to beseech the lady calling upon her to fulfil her promises made before her parents back in Kasulu District – she wants to continue with school.
But the lady becomes adamant; she would not listen to ‘stories’ of such kind.
’Girl, you can walk home if you persist with your school orations,’ the lady shouts back to the poor girl from the Baha tribesfolk, knowing that she was in any way not in a position to go back home to the country’s region bordering Rwanda on the west.
Realising the futility of her efforts to go back to the classroom, the girl surrenders to the ‘realities’ – becoming a housemaid, doing all domestic chores, including, among many, tending to the animals, cooking, doing the washings, etc.
This actual example provides what is known as child labour in its typicality.
Both the local and African media has written so much on child labour to the extent that it now presents a perpetual boredom. But children subjected to this torture are not bored.
According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), child labour means all forms of work by children under the age laid down in ILO standards (normally 15 years or the age of completion of compulsory schooling subject to some exceptions).
Worst forms of this labour include: slavery, debt bondage, prostitution, pornography, forced recruitment of children for use in armed conflicts, use of children in drug trafficking and other illicit activities.
Other forms include all other work likely to be harmful or hazardous to the health, safety or morals of girls and boys under 18 years of age.
In Tanzania, some 4,600 children are estimated to be subject to this type of labour. The small-scale mining industry has always been pointed to be the main culprit.
Going by a myriad of names for their ’professions’, these children are sprawled all over the country from Tarime in Mara, Talawaka in Biharamulo, Mererani in Arusha to Mtwara region where the mining of an array of gemstone has been in full swing particularly for about 20 years since the advent of liberalisation in the country.
These children, as young as eight years old, dig 30 metres underground in mines for eight hours a day, without proper lighting and ventilation – constantly under danger of injury or death from cave-ins.
For neighbouring Kenya, according to the available statistics, its government recently reported that 1.9 million children, between the ages of 15-17, are working children.
Only 3.2 per cent of these children have attained a secondary school education and 12.7 per cent have no formal schooling at all.
According to the same statistics from ILO, during the peak coffee picking in Kenya, it has been estimated that up to 30 per cent of the pickers are younger than 15 years.
Also, in another neighbouring country, Zambia, its government points out that there are 595,000 child workers in the country, of this number, 58 per cent are 14 years old or younger, and, thus, ineligible for any form of employment under the Employment of Young Persons Act.
It is the same case in Rwanda where there are an estimated 400,000 child workers. Of these, 120,000 are thought to be involved in the worst forms of child labour and 60,000 are child domestic workers.
Of the worlds 246 million children aged between five and seven years who are engaged in child labour, 48 million are found in sub-Saharan Africa making this continent to have the greatest incidence of economically active children with 41 percent of them on the continent at work.
On average, more than 30 per cent of African children from the arid and acrid terrains of Dodoma and Shinyanga in Tanzania, to the swampy forests of the Congo Valley are agricultural workers.
According to a recent survey by the Ministry of Public Service and Labour in Rwanda of children involved in prostitution in several large Rwandan cities found that 40 per cent of child prostitutes had lost both of their parents, 94% lived in extreme poverty and 41 per cent had never been to school.
That is only a bird’s eye view of how child labour seems to be on the increase with every passing day, a situation created by some by-products emanating from bad governance unequal opportunities to social and economic rights in the pertaining countries.
As child labour seems to gain ground in Africa, serious administrators have to beam their minds at the two most crucial factors if they are determined to curb this vice.
It’s good governance and equal social and economic opportunities for all.
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