Building A Holistic Resilient Ghana Free From Child Labour

Child labour is one of the grievous enemies of nation development. Not only does it affects the individual life of the child and his/her future, but rubs the nation’s future leaders. Child are the only surety of every nation’s future existence and in case where these valuable insurance of the nation are rocked with child labour, we can only rely on faith to save us, otherwise we must do everything humanly possible to rescue our children from the cancer.

In Ghana, every rural or urban community is faced with serious and dangerous forms of child labour. These forms of child labour are found in farming, fishing, quarrying, catering, hawking, animal rearing, and many other sectors of work. Even in domestic certain, parents either intentionally or unconsciously engage children in domestic child labour. This is my story;

The herd-boy

Once upon a time in 1986, I was born into an extended family and an animal breeding community. Unfortunately for me, I was best shepherd. My uncle took me to herd cattle. I started herding the animals at the age of seven.

Animal herding was regarded as a prestige according to local standards by then and individuals could send their sons or daughters to animal owners to help in herding. If you were a good cattle caretaker, you could easily get a wife as a young man. Not only do you milk the cows for consumption, but also sell some to make money. So virtually, herding cattle and or sheep was so attractive to parents and young boys and girls. Getting cow dung to fertilize farm lands annually was a target for most family and household heads.

I shepherd the animals for eight good years, face all the consequences of the well-dreamed occupation of many by that time. It was difficult getting sandals to wear. For clothes, I prefer to call them rags. The best protected body wear was the animals’ skin and not all the time it was given to me to wear for herding.

There were sad days and good moments. I endured several risks. The risk of walking bare footed to care for animals in the bush for 8 years, the pain of having your body pierced with stocks, sharp objects and thorns, the exposure to snake and scorpion bites and insects, the danger of attack by robbers and other criminals, the fear of animals getting missing and being beaten at home should it happen, the maltreatment meted out on you by senior herd-boys and farmers, the threat of heavy rain-falls and windstorms, the stress involved in controlling ‘notorious’ animals, and the exposure to bad climates such as cold, harmattan, hot weather, winds and other disasters were some of the experiences of herd-boys.

All these I endured and never resisted herding the cattle despite all the consequences. At herding I was always punctual and respects every herd-boy, junior or senior. I obeys the instructions of the senior herd-boys and engages not in any form of laziness, backbiting or indiscipline. I herded the cattle with passion, diligence, commitment, and perseverance though I never wished to be caretaker for animals. Had it not be God who saved me and I was later able to go to school on a shift basis with my sibling, today I couldn’t have known ABCD how much to talk writing articles like this.

About 99% of my friends whom we herd cattle together never had any opportunity to go to school or enter into any form of vocation or handwork. There were many other children less than 15 years who were not herding but engage in stone picking, firewood making, farm labour (by-day), shea-nut picking, and dawadawa hunting. All these children never had any opportunity to be in school and today, their lives rely solely on hand-to-mouth, contributing nothing to the country’s development.

To curb this menace, we need a collective holistic and integrated broad-based approach to tackling this child labour. Child labour is an all encompassing social problem and so only a solution which is all-encompassing can eliminate it. Government need to play leading role in this regard by providing the policy, legal, and social intervention framework for the cancer to be dealt with.

Academic institutions such as school and their management bodies such as Board, School Management Committee (SMC), Parent Teacher Association (PTA) and teachers must play critical role in controlling children in school and providing proper educational services and guidance and counselling.

Civil society and non-governmental organisations must provide adequate advocacy and build good awareness level of parents to increasing their proper understanding of child labour and its implications for the development of the children.

The parents even have greater responsibility in protecting their children and not using or exploiting these children by engaging them in child labour activities.

The traditional and local leaders must find-turn the socio-cultural norms and laws in order to protect children from all forms of dangerous activities.

The law enforcement agencies must up their game in search, identify, arrest culprits and rescue children involved in child labour activities.

All stakeholders must provide opportunity for all needy and poor families to improve their livelihoods to prevent these families from using children as bread winners. And finally, all efforts must be made to protect orphans and single-parents children from engaging in any form of child labour activity.

All these efforts must be implemented collectively with a well coordinated and continuous process until we get to a point where we can boldly say, we have reduced child labour in Ghana by at least 70%.

Writer’s email: [email protected]