Child labour is a work that harms children’s health or keeps them from attending school.
These activities are beyond the reach of statistical survey but the numbers likely to be over 10 million.
Child labour is a widespread, growing problem in the developing world. About 250 million of the world’s children work, nearly half of them work full-time. Some children regularly participate in the labour force to earn a living or supplement household income, and this prevents children from participating in schools.
According to the 1992 data for Ghana, one girl in three and one boy in four does not attend school. This is mostly found in the rural areas where these children are used to work on farms.
Child labour in Africa, especially Ghana, is unpaid work in family agricultural enterprise. Of the 28% of children engaged in child labour, more than two-third are in school.
The darkest category of child labour relates to those children caught up in criminal activities such as prostitution, military enrolment, slavery such as bond labour or child trafficking which involve the removal of child from its home, often involving deception and payment for a wide range of exploitative purpose.
Childhood is the most innocent stage in human life. It is that phase of life where a child is free from all the tensions, fun-loving, play and learns new things and is the sweetheart of all family members. But this is only one side of the story. The other side is full of tensions and burden. Here the innocent child is not the sweetheart of the family, instead he or she is an earning machine, working entire day in order to satisfy the needs and wants of his or her family.
Child labour not only causes damage to a child physical and mental health but also deprive of his or her basic right to education, development and freedom.
UNICEF report says that 80% of girls working as domestic servant are between the ages of 10-14 years.
The high cost of schooling and poor quality and irrelevance of education has also pushed many children into work.
Family characteristics play a big role in the child decision to work or to go to school. The father’s education has a significant negative effect on child labour. The effect is stronger on girls than boys so adult literacy could indirectly reduce the amount of child labour.
To improve human capital and reduce the incidence of child labour in Ghana, the country’s school system should reduce families schooling cost, adapt to the constraint on schooling in rural areas, where most children must work at least part-time, more relevant to the needs of labour market.
If these things are done, more families may decide that schooling is available as opposed to child labour for their children.
The situation of child labour is worse in our rural areas. Children aged less than 8 are taken to the farm to weed a plot of land that even an elderly one may find it difficult to weed. Some carry very heavy loads of fire-wood to their houses after hard day’s work.
When a child complains about this he or she will be beaten severely and would be denied of food for some number of days.
In the urban centers, children are mostly found in traffic, selling to feed themselves and their families. Some of these children are sometimes being knocked-down by cars.
When you visit the fishing communities, you often see children as young as 9 years being taught how to fish instead of going to school. These children either go fishing with their fathers or wait to carry the fish that will be caught.
Poverty is the main cause of child labour in the country. It is observed that poor families have more number of children, so it becomes difficult for them to survive on the income of only one family which is also quite less. So they make their small children source of income. They make their children work in factories, shops, even selling items on the streets.
Some parents even carry infants to the streets to earn money from begging. There are very bad effects of child labour for our society, which forces some children to steal things from others in order to satisfy their living, many small girls are also made to indulge in prostitution.
It is time to eliminate bad practices from our society. The general public, individuals and organizations should collaborate with the government to put a stop to child labour in the country.
Parents who force their children to engage in practices like selling on the streets should be arrested and prosecuted. Those who engage in child trafficking must be brought to the law court.
Let’s all come together to fight against child labour by helping children and imparting education among that part of society from where majority of the child labour comes.
Poor families should be given knowledge about family planning so that they are not burdened by children. It would be advisable not to keep small children at home for taking domestic help in daily househood chores.
Let us all take some step in this direction so that we can bring smiles to many faces and make this world a beautiful place for a child to live in.
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