CHILD LABOUR: AN ENDEMIC PROBLEM IN UPPER EAST (PAGE 34)

Story: Benjamin Xornam Glover, Bolgatanga

CHILD labour in the Upper East Region is an endemic problem. It begins from the homes, where girls are taken as domestic slaves, and on the farms where boys are taken to work as farm hands or to herd sheep at the expense of their education.
In the Talensi-Nabdan District, where gold is mined illegally (galamsey), the miners employ the services of children to sift the pounded rock extracted from the mines to get the gold dust.
The masters then sell the gold dust to international gold mining companies.
Even though child labour is illegal in Ghana, it is very difficult to clamp down on the perpetrators.
One organisation which is trying very hard to curb the phenomenon, at least in the Upper East Region, is Afrikids Ghana, a non-governmental organisation (NGO).
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) engaged Afrikids Ghana to undertake a World Bank-funded project to tackle child labour in the small-scale gold mines at Talensi-Nabdam, especially in the area where the children’s rights were greatly abused in the region.
The Project Manager of the project, which has been code-named “Operation Sunlight”, Mr Raymond Ayine, told the Daily Graphic that initially the offer was to implement a child labour project in the Bolga municipality and another district of its choice.
“We thought that since the Talensi-Nabdam District was a new one, it had a lot of developmental challenges so we saw it as an opportunity to be one of the first NGOs to make a positive impact in the district. We, therefore, decided to take the project on board," he stated.
Mr Ayine said Afrikids Ghana was chosen to run the project because of its wide range of experience, adding that the project would work with all the local stakeholder organisations, including the district assembly, the Ghana Education Service and the Department of Social Welfare, to tackle the problem.
According to him, the project would prevent children from getting into mining through community awareness, advocacy and educational programmes, in addition to providing parents with micro-finance loans and skills training for them to increase their family incomes in order to take the pressure off the children.
Mr Ayine stated that the project would also manage the withdrawal, placement and rehabilitation of the children who were already working in the mines.
He said the programme to get the children out of the mines commenced in 2006, adding that since June 2007 about 150 children from 10 communities, namely, Gbani, Nangdi, Duusi, Accra, Tarkwa, Yaale, Datuko, Obuasi, Kulpelga and Kejetia had been profiled.
According to Mr Ayine, in terms of service delivery the NGO had been able to enrol 118 children in schools, saying that one of the greatest challenges which had faced the project since its inception was the absence of a public school within its catchment area.
Mr Ayine, therefore, appealed to the government, through the district assembly, to provide the beneficiary communities with a school which was proximate to the mining areas.
He said that would enable the children to attend a public school and also enjoy other incentives such as the Capitation Grant and the School Feeding Programme.