The child labour manifesto-beyond elections

In Ghana, child labour is almost ubiquitous. The canker is prevalent in many communities and districts, affecting about two million children according to the last national child labour report by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) in 2014.

Our children are in domestic servitude, commercial sexual exploitation including prostitution and child pornography, manual handling or transportation of heavy loads (Kayayei), illegal mining (galamsey), ritual servitude (e.g. trokosi), commercial agriculture (such as hazardous work in cocoa farming), streetism and inordinate hawking, begging, fishing (including inland fishing on lake Volta), child trafficking and many other illicit activities.

According to the GSS 2014 Report, there were more than two hundred thousand of our children in child labour in the Volta, Eastern and Northern regions. In the Brong-Ahafo, Upper East and Upper West regions, more than one-in-three (>30%) children were in child labour. In urban areas such as Accra and Kumasi, we witness significant numbers of children engaged in hazardous work. Clearly, there is a problem, probably a crisis.

Unless we extend the fight against child labour from the socio-cultural perspective to the arenas of morality economics and power, where it belongs, we will continue in circles and crash in mediocrity.

Ghana’s development is slow. The economy is largely informal, unpredictable and of low productivity. This is because, as reported by a 2020 World Bank study on youth employment, “most jobs are low-skilled, requiring limited cognitive or technology know-how. The quality of these jobs is reflected in low earnings and less decent work” [1] . A study by the ILO in 2016 showed a connection between child labour and youth unemployment, highlighting the concern that children trapped in child labour have less opportunities for future decent work.

They are more likely to become under-skilled adults who cannot access viable employment. Children in child labour miss out on high cognitive capacity because they are engaged in work that affects their ability to properly benefit from school even if they are enrolled. They have inadequate learning outcomes and lose out on the technological know-how, critical thinking and emotional intelligence required by the fast-changing nature of high-yielding jobs.

Thus, today’s high rate of unemployment, poor decent work opportunities and reduced national development is the results of yesterday’s child labour we could not properly address. In the same way, today’s child labour tomorrow youth unemployment and a mortgage of the economic future of our country.

The World Bank again reports that “300,000 new jobs would have to be created each year to absorb the increasing numbers of unemployed young people. Yet the structure of the Ghanaian economy in terms of employment has not changed much from several decades”. This couples the fact that for two decades (2000-2020) since Ghana ratified ILO Convention of the Worst Forms of Child Labour much of our efforts have not produced much change.

If the structure of our economy will ever change for the better we would need to produce, on a large scale, future workers with high cognitive and technological know-how. That means much of the time of our present children should be applied in engaging them in serious academic, technical or vocational learning. We can produce aeroplanes, ships, space vehicles and Mass explorers not if we make excuses for child labour but experiences of cutting-urge high-end globally competitive education.

A Manifesto beyond Elections

Perhaps because children (persons below 18 years) have no vote, they are of less relevance to politicians during election seasons. But this is dangerous because a discerning cohort of today’s children, between fourteen and seventeen years, will be eligible to vote in the next elections of 2024; and if they decide to vote for only that Party (incumbent or opposition) which effectively addressed child labour in the previous four years (that is 2020 to 2024), then perhaps the ongoing electioneering campaigns with do something beyond lip service to address their relative negligence to children’s issues.

But why should elections be the end of the electorates’ leverage? Effectively dealing with child labour would involve continuous advocacy for quality education, effective social protection and good jobs. With the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) and now Free Senior High School (SHS) education and the current promises we are hearing about what will be done for the tertiary levels, it is sensible to pursue the national agenda to eliminate child labour beyond the ballot box.

Therefore, after the elections, the fight against child labour would persist. The compulsory and universal components of FCUBE should be pursued even to hard-to-reach areas with sparse populations. The Free SHS should be translated into high-quality SHS, and the tertiary promises should be implemented together with practical technology know-how so our graduates are not just paper products but manufacturing gurus.

The child labour problem is not just a Ghana thing. Estimates by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) indicate 152 million children in child labour across the world, with 73 million in the worst forms particularly hazardous work. The largest numbers and proportions are in Africa: 72 million children, including 31.5 million in some worst forms (hazardous work). More seriously, progress seems to be stalling in Africa: over the period 2012 to 2016 when other regions were making progress, child labour in sub-Saharan Africa actually increased. This is why ongoing efforts in Ghana should not be stalled.

The viable seeds of technical efforts that have been made in the area of legal frameworks, capacity building, setting up of the Ghana Child Labour Monitoring System (GCLMS) and the push to establish Child Labour Free Zones (CLFZs) and the broad collaborations among stakeholders can yield practical gains of preventing or withdrawing children from present predicaments and resetting the structure of our economy on a sound foundation beyond political talk. That would be a good example for other countries in our region and beyond.

[1] World Bank Group (2020): Youth Employment Programs in Ghana, Options for Effective Policy Making and Implementation (Christabel E. Dadzie, Mawuko Fumey and Suleiman Namara)