Rate of child labour declines in Ghana — Report
The Global and National Estimates of Child Labour Report 2012 indicates that the rate of child labour in Ghana has declined.
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The report, however, suggests that the rate of reduction is very minimal to enable the country to meet the 2016 goal of no child labour.
It has, therefore, impressed upon the government to do more to help eradicate the phenomenon.
This was made known in Accra during a roundtable discussion for stakeholders to discuss the problem and work at the way forward, after the Brazilia Global Conference on Child Labour in October 2013.
Gender Ministry’s efforts at reducing child labour
Speaking at the forum, the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur, outlined measures that her ministry had put in place to help eradicate child labour.
She noted that a law on child labour and child trafficking had been drafted for onward submission to Parliament.
When passed, it will protect the rights of children in Ghana.
She added that the Department of Social Welfare would be restructured to have structures for child protection.
Nana Lithur observed that poverty was the root cause of child labour in the country and so the implementation of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme was a way to give cash to reduce child labour to the barest minimum.
“If we give them these grants, we hope the issue of child labour will be reduced, at least to a large extent,” she added.
Government’s efforts at reducing the practice
The Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Nii Armah Ashietey, said the country had provided an adequate framework for protecting children from exploitation.
He cited the 1992 Constitution, the Children’s Act, 1998 (Act 560), the Criminal Code Amendment Act 1998 (Act 554) and the Labour Act, 2003 (Act 651) as some of the laws enacted to protect the Ghanaian child.
Mr Ashietey said the country had developed a National Plan of Action (NPA) for the elimination of the worst forms of child labour by 2015.
“The NPA provides an integrated framework for harmonising all relevant actions by partners in order to address all child labour problems in a more coordinated and sustained manner,” he said.
To demonstrate the government’s commitment to the fight against child labour, he pointed out that Ghana had offered itself to be peer-reviewed by other ECOWAS countries before the end of the year.
He added that the government had made available in its 2014 Budget support for the implementation of the NPA, which he said was geared towards meeting the needs of children.
The Secretary-General of the Ghana Trades Union (TUC), Mr Kofi Asamoah, said child labour was not entertained at the workplace.
For his part, the Executive Director of the Ghana Employers Association (GEA), Mr Alex Frimpong, urged businesses in Ghana to make child labour a corporate social responsibility by reporting issues of child labour to the appropriate quarters.
He said the association would collaborate with organised labour to report companies that were not working in the interest of children.
Mr Frimpong added that since the lack of education was another cause of child labour, his outfit had put in place plans to deepen public sensitisation to the dangers of the act and suggested possible solutions.