National programme to eliminate child labour in limbo as funding ceases
Staff of the National Programme for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour in Cocoa (NPECLC) have been rendered redundant as a result of lack of funds to work with.
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The NPECLC was established in 2006 as the government's response to the child labour menace in the cocoa sector.
The Programme Manager, Mr Kenneth Mamudu, in an interview with the Daily Graphic yesterday, expressed regret that the once functional programme, which made many strides in containing the child labour menace had slacked as a result of lack of cash flow to prosecute the agenda.
He said the programme flourished and achieved a lot in the area of identifying and selecting vulnerable children for support but for the past three years, the successes that the programme achieved had been eroded and that placed Ghana in a dangerous position.
International protocol
Ghana became part of an international protocol known as the Harkin-Engel Protocol that enjoined the country to provide funds to support the implementation of a programme towards the elimination of child labour in the cocoa sector.
However, despite the numerous achievements that the programme has chalked up since its inception, the release of funds for the programme had ceased since 2014, resulting in the virtual collapse of the one-time vibrant programme that covered almost all cocoa producing districts in Ghana.
Reports indicate that the country risk losing $500 million in aid from the Unites States (US) government, if immediate steps are not taken to combat the child labour and trafficking menace.
The US Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Robert Jackson, is reported to have said the US might be compelled to cut critical aid to Ghana if the government fails to secure successful prosecutions of persons involved in the business of trafficking and child labour cash flow problems.
The offices of the NPECLC at the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations were closed when the Daily Graphic visited there.
A source at the ministry told the Daily Graphic that personnel who were engaged under the programme had been compelled to sit at home because their salaries for many months were not paid.
Implications
The source said the implications of government’s failure to release funds for the programme were that many children who were identified to be in child labour in cocoa communities could not have their situations changed.
“The many years of hard work that has gone into the establishment and achievements of the programme has gone down the drain. Many of the children who were being supported will go back into child labour not to talk of the many more children who were to be withdrawn from the child labour situation but will remain in it because the programme is not running,” the source added.
In 2010, Ghana was blacklisted by the US government for not doing much by way of interventions to eliminate child labour in cocoa growing communities.
The 2016 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report placed Ghana on a Tier 2 watch list position which means that the exploitation of Ghanaians, particularly children, is extremely high.
The report also highlighted extraordinary numbers of boys and girls forced into labour, especially street hawking, begging and fishing.
According to the US envoy, despite some investigations and awareness campaigns, Ghana did not demonstrably commit to anti-trafficking efforts in 2015.
The US is said to provide almost $15 million last year to assist the government with training and with enforcement “but we are seeing very little activity on the protection side,and we are seeing zero activity on the prosecution side. These are the three pillars for combating trafficking,'' Mr Jackson remarked.
The US ambassador was of the view that such activities reversed Ghana's poor showing in the TIP report.
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