FRAMEWORK TO ELIMINAE CHILD LABOUR IN COCOA SECTOR (BACK PAGE)

The government has put in place a sound and workable framework for eliminating worst forms of child labour in the cocoa sector.
Major components of the framework include providing education and training for vulnerable children, sensitising them to the worst forms of child labour, building capacity and community empowerment, which is in line with the commitment of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) government to investing in people and creating jobs.
The Minister of Employment and Social Welfare, Mr Stephen Amoanor Kwao, who announced this, reiterated the government’s position that there was no child and adult slavery in Ghana’s cocoa sector, as well as in other sectors of the economy.
The minister expressed concern over “false reports about slavery in the cocoa sector’’ in the country.
He explained that these false reports tended to erode all the positive progress being made in the cocoa-growing areas where the government targeted about 5,000 vulnerable children for assistance to enable them to pursue formal education.
Mr Kwao, who was addressing an international meeting of panel of experts on child labour in Accra, said 1,300 children had already benefited from government financial support in accessing education and training.
He said the main constraints had been technical and financial support to sustain the programme to completely eliminate worst forms of child labour in the cocoa and other sectors.
Mr Kwao explained that child labour was not only a consequence, but a cause of poverty cycle and underdevelopment.
He said, for example, that children subjected to extreme forms of exploitation without education would grow to be illiterate adults, who would virtually have no prospects of crossing the poverty line.
The minister noted that the prosperity of the country depended greatly on the quality of human resources, and tolerating child labour was inconsistent with the massive investment the government was making.
He said the meeting of experts was, therefore, a stock-taking exercise in reflecting on how far the country had come and assessing the achievements made and the challenges confronting the sector, so as to agree on the critical requirements of cocoa farmers and their families in order to mobilise all available resources to address them.