In the same vein, parents have been advised to show greater responsibility for their children’s up-keep, as parental neglect is a strong push factor in the prevalence of child labour in Ghana.
The call was made by the Project Director of the ILO, Madam Lalaina Rasafindrakoto at a press event organised to launch the 2016 World Child Labour Day, in Accra on Thursday.
This year’s commemoration of the special day set aside by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to mark international efforts to end child labour, is on the theme: “End Child Labour in supply chains in Ghana.”
Commenting on the factors that push children into often hazardous work, Madam Lalaina Rasafindrakoto said, “Until parents are able to support themselves financially, children will continue to be used to help top-up household incomes in all stages of the supply chain, including in agriculture, fishing, mining, retail and other sectors;” and again, “Until buyers stop purchasing goods that are tainted with child labour from their suppliers, until effective and robust monitoring mechanisms are in place, until better alternatives to child labour, including free quality education and vocational training are available, child labour will never be eliminated – it may even get worse.”
According to a survey by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), more than 21 per cent of children in Ghana are still engaged in child labour.
The survey, undertaken in 2014, and supported by the ILO indicates that 21.8% of children aged 5 -17 years (about 1.9 million) are still engaged in child labour in Ghana. About fourteen percent (14.2%) of the children covered in the survey (about 1.2million) were engaged in hazardous forms of child labour.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) defines child labour as work that deprives children of their childhood potential and dignity, and which is harmful to their physical and mental development.
In developing countries such as Ghana, most of these children are engaged in the manufacturing, agriculture, fishing, mining, construction or service industries; and are deprived of education, and sometimes exposed to occupational, health and environmental hazards.
To some extent, child labour involves children being trafficked, enslaved, separated from their families, exposed to serious hazards and illnesses, and is left to care for themselves.
However, not all work that children are involved in is termed as child labour, there is work that children do to help their families at home in a ways which are not harmful or exploitative. That is, work which is not likely to be harmful to the health or development of the child and does not affect the child’s attendance at school or the capacity of the child to benefit from school work.
The Deputy Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Hon. Baba Jamal, in an address, described the situation where 21 per cent of children are estimated to be engaged in child labour as “a breach of the constitutional and fundamental human rights of children and a liability to socio-economic development.” He stressed that, it is a serious development problem with local and global consequences, adding that, “It is for this reason the UN Agenda for Transformation included a target on the elimination of all forms of child labour by 2025, as an indicator for achieving economic growtth.
By Latifa Carlos
