The minister of state for Youth and Children Affairs, Sarah Mateke Nyirabashitsi has warned that parents in tea growing areas across the country, who subject school going children to work on tea plantations face arrest and subsequent prosecution if they don’t desist from this tendency.
Minister Mateke was addressing participants at the World Day against Child Labour, held at Sheraton Hotel in Kampala on Monday.
“When I paid a visit to the Kigezi sub region recently to assess the state of school going children, I was disappointed to note that children had abandoned classes and instead resorted to working on tea plantations. Child labour is illegal and all those engaged in the vice face arrest and prosecution if the law catches up with them,” she warned.
She advised parents and guardians of school going children to embrace Government programs; such as Parish Development Model (PDM) and Emyooga to transform themselves from subsistence farming to money making economic ventures.
Minister Mateke in addition, said Government with support from Development partners are committed to end child labour by 2025.
“We need to re-double our effort to end all forms of child labour, which mostly affects marginalized groups, such as the poor households in the Ugandan society,” she added.
Jealous Chirove, the International Labour Organization (ILO) Officer in charge for East Africa, said child labour is hazardous and dangerous to health, safety and morals of a child. He said child labour affects children education aged between 5 to 11, which jeopardizes their future employment opportunities.
He further said two thirds of child labour (42 percent) occurs at family level, while the rest occurs in rural and urban areas where Agriculture sector amounts to 90 percent of Child labour in Africa.
John Oketcho, the Chairman, Central Organization of tree unions ( COFTU) attributed child labour to ignorance, where some parents don’t practice family planning and raise up a big number of children whom they cannot take care of. He said Government should intensify family planning campaigns in rural areas to curb the rate at which parents send their children to work on peoples’ farms for little money, to sustain their households, when they are supposed to be in school.
The World Day against Child Labour was carried out in partnership with the Netherlands Embassy, HIVOs Foundation and Federation of Uganda Employers (FUE) among others.
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