UNICEF HAS began a move to improve awareness creation aimed at providing coastal communities with livelihood empowerment to curtail the practice of child labour.
In a report it titled, ‘Why child labour cannot be forgotten during Covid-19’, it indicates that in just a matter of months, the virus has already had drastic consequences on children.
It said their access to education, food, and health services had been dramatically affected across the globe.
According to UNICEF, the impact has been so much that the United Nation Secretary-General added his voice by urging governments and donors to offset the immediate effects of the pandemic crisis on children.
Over 1.9 Million children in child labour
In Ghana, an estimated 1.9 million children are engaged in child labour with the fisheries sector being one of the predominant sectors engaging child labourers.
Out of the number, 49,000 of these children are engaged on the Volta Lake alone and are forced to undertake hazardous child labour that put their lives at risk.
It is for this reason that a consortium of three local NGOs in Ghana; Hen Mpoanu Mpoano, CEWEFIA and Challenging Height, with funding from the European Union, have been working on a project dubbed, ‘Securing Child’s Right in the Fisheries Sector (SECRIFISE).’
The project is aimed at securing child’s rights in the fisheries sector by increasing public support for eliminating child labour and trafficking (CLaT), supporting the enforcement of anti-CLaT legislation and implementing community-based initiatives for integrating CLaT victims into mainstream society and advocating against child labour in the coastal communities and also helping to rescue children who have already found themselves in the situation.
This year’s World Day Against Child Labour is focusing on the impact of the crisis on child labour.
According to the International Labour Organization, the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting economic and labour market shocks are having a huge impact on people’s lives and livelihoods.
Unfortunately, children are often the first to suffer. The crisis can push millions of vulnerable children into child labour.
Already, there are an estimated 152 million children in child labour, 72 million of whom in hazardous work.
These children are now at even greater risk of facing circumstances that are even more difficult and working longer hours.
UNICEF’S report
According to a report on child labour in Ghana by UNICEF, of all children in Ghana aged 5 to17 years, about 21 percent are involved in child labour and 14 percent are engaged in hazardous forms of labour. This is twice as common in rural areas.
For poorer households, child labour is a negative coping mechanism and most of the children are involved in agriculture and fishing industries.
In all regions, the vast majority of working children are unpaid family workers between the ages of 5 and 17 years. While usually, boys are more likely to be doing manual work, this could be due to the household interpretation of what constitutes child labour.
Thus, the heavy domestic workload for girls, including childcare, is not considered as child labour.
There are no reliable figures on the number of children affected by the worst forms of child labour, which includes sale of children, child prostitution and trafficking and children living and working on the streets of Ghana.
While accurate numbers of human trafficking cases are unavailable, it is believed that the large majority of all cases involve children, mainly girls.
Child labour is a significant problem in Ghana, affecting almost two million children.
Ordeal of 13-year-old Blessing
Blessing Attah is a 13-year-old and a victim of child labour. Blessing said she lived with her parents until one day, when she was asked by her parants to go and stay with a relative in order for her to get access to better education.
According to her, she did not hesitate to go because she looked forward to a better education her parent could not give her.
Unfortunately, for her, when she got there, the situation was different. She said she was mostly subjected to beatings anytime she failed to execute her daily activities due to tiredness.
The 13-year-old victim has since been left with some marks on her body.
She explained that she had to work for long hours until she fell ill and could no longer walk. According to her, she was sent back home unaccompanied and labelled as a witch.
Currently, Blessing’s limbs are gradually shrivelling and she is losing all forms of mobility in her legs.
She said she had no other option than to run back to her parents when the situation became unbearable.
Blessing said she dreams of becoming a nurse in future but she fears she may never see this dream fulfilled. Her fear is whether her parents will be able to assist her achieve her dream, especially now that she is losing mobility in her limbs due to the treatment she went through at the hands of those she went to serve.
Care for your own children
Her advice to parents is for them not to entrust their children’s life in the hands of others for the sake of poverty among other reasons.
The SECRIFISE project
In the Central Region, organizations taking the responsibility to help curb child labour are Hen MpoanuMpoano, CEWEFIA and Challenging Heights.
Currently, they have an ongoing project dubbed ‘Securing child’s right in the fisheries sector (SECRIFISE) with Jemimah Eminsang as the project manager.
According to her, the project will cover five districts in the Central Region and six in the Volta Region.
These areas, she said, had been strategically chosen as a result of a research that established that there is a link between child labour in the Volta Region and that in the Central Region.
She also indicated that there were some familiar ties between some of the migrant settlers in the Volta Region and the people of the Central Region engaged in the same livelihood, which is fishing.
The organization said it had identified poverty as one of the major causes of child labour in the fishing communities.
Due to the lack of financial resources, parents give out their children to become labourers, so that they are remitted yearly or based on whatever agreement they have with the people their children are going to work for.
Also, it said, “traditionally in the Ghanaian culture, it is common to see people send out their children to work with others, or learn a trade, which is also a reason why people send their children, so basically I will say poverty and learning of a trade, or helping out a family member with a trade are causes of child labour.
Project objectives
The project, as part of its objective, will help rescue children forced into child labour on the Volta Lake, take them through rehabilitation and reintegrate them into mainstream society. The organization is targeting rescuing about forty (40) children who have been out there on the Volta Lake working and when rescued, they will be sent to rehabilitation centres and later re-integrate them into by living with their families.
They will also monitor and make sure the chikdren are put in schools or are given alternative social service that is going to enhance their development.
Parents from identified vulnerable households are also going to be given some kind of benefit from livelihood empowerment
activities designed to improve household financial resources to enable them to save money to take care of their children.
Project partners
The project will be done closely with community structures like the community child protection committee and state agencies such as social welfare, Ministry of Gender, Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development and the anti-human trafficking unit of the Ghana Police Service to support their work in child labour by building their capacity in order to do their tracing, re-habilitation and re-integration of the victims into the mainstream society.
They are also in close collaboration with the law enforcement agencies and particularly anti-human trafficking unit of the Ghana Police Service to support the work in child labour.
BY: FRANCISCA DICKSON ARHIN
