MORE CHILDREN ENGAGE IN HAZARDOUS WORK (PAGE 35)

From Tim Dzamboe, Godzekpota-Agave

The South Tongu District Chief Executive, Ms Cate Aku Aglah, has decried the involvement of many children in hazardous work of all kinds in the district and attributes this to the entrenchment of the circle of poverty in households and families.
She said parents could not use poverty as justification to refuse to enrol their children in school and to prefer to sell them out or personally engage them in hazardous work, for this would only contribute to making the children’s future bleak.
Ms Aglah said this when she delivered an address at a durbar to mark the world day on the worse forms of child labour at Godzekpota-Agave in the South Tongu District last Thursday.
She said many interventions by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the government such as the Capitation Grant and the School Feeding Programme to care for children in school did not justify keeping the children out of school.
The DCE commended the Time-Bound Project (TBP) sponsored by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and other NGOs, particularly the International Needs Ghana (ING), for their hard work to stamp out child labour in the district, saying that without their support the situation would have been more serious.
She appealed to community leaders, chiefs and parents to partner the Assembly through its district child labour committees, the TBP and NGOs to eradicate the problem from the area to enable every child to access education, which would guarantee them a better life in the future.
The Volta Regional Co-ordinator of the ING, Mr Sylvanus Adukpo, said over 400 children had been identified in various forms of child labour, especially in fishing and cattle herding at Aglorkpovia, Agave, Dendo, Fieve and Dorkploame.
According to him, 246 children had been rescued and placed in school and that the exercise had been made possible with the collaboration of Ghana Education Service, the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), the police, traditional authorities and the Department of Social Welfare.
He, however, expressed regret that 96 other children had been identified roaming the bush of Atsieve, Dendo, Yorkutikpo, Avorvi, Dorkploame and Fieve herding cattle, adding that there were still others being trafficked to Akosombo and Yeji to fish.
Mr Adukpo called on development partners working in the district and traditional authorities to work at educating and sensitising their communities to the need to stop the use of children in labour at the expense of their education.
In a speech read on her behalf, the South Tongu District Director of Ghana Education Service (GES), Ms Selynne Kuto, urged parents to let education of their children be their priority.
She advised parents to cut down expenditure on cigarettes, alcohol, funerals and clothes and spend more on education since expenditure on education was recoverable.
Ms Kuto said it was the moral duty of every generation to improve upon and hand down the culture of its society to the next generation.