The Government of Ghana is committed to aggressively tackling issues of child trafficking and child labour as a way of protecting the rights of children in cocoa-growing communities and in the country as a whole.
To that effect, government has put in place mechanisms and legal frameworks to ensure that children, especially those in rural and cocoa-growing communities, are protected from all forms of hazardous work.
Consequently, from 2009 to 2013, child labour activities in Ghana have seen a six per cent decline.
The Minister for Employment and Labour Relations (MELR), Hon. Haruna Iddrisu, disclosed these in an address delivered on his behalf at stakeholder meeting in Accra, yesterday, on reducing child labour in cocoa growing areas.
The meeting brought together stakeholders to devise new strategies against the problem of child labour in cocoa production countries and communities in sub-Saharan Africa
It was organized by the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) on the theme: “Working together– Linking Cocoa-growing Communities, Supply-chains and National Policies”.
In an address, Mr Divine Ayidzoe, Director, Statistics, Research, Information Technology and Public Relations, Ministry of Education (MoE), disclosed that as a response to containing child labour in cocoa-growing communities, MoE was implementing a Teacher Rationalization Policy, under which a number of trained teachers had been off-loaded from the urban to the rural areas, particularly in the Western region.
Mr Ayidzoe disclosed that the Ghana Education Service Act, 1995 (Act 506) and the Education Act, 2008 (Act 778) had been consolidated into a Bill which, when passed into law, would see the establishment of new regulatory bodies–the National Inspectorate Council, National Teacher Training Authority and the National Curriculum and Assessment Council– to oversee the delivery of quality education in Ghana.
For his part, the Executive Director of ICI, Mr Nick Weatherill, noted that the problem of child labour in cocoa production was a complex one that required multi- stakeholder initiatives and expertise to tackle.
Mr Weatherill lauded Ghana’s efforts tackling the issue of child labour. “Ghana’s national policy on compulsory education is very important and Ghana has made great strides in this sector, particularly in the primary level even though there are still challenges of getting teachers to the rural areas,” he added.
He admitted that the challenges of fighting child labour in all its forms were enormous, adding, however, that progress was being made and that the meeting was part of efforts in overcoming the challenges.
In her remarks, the Ghana National Co-ordinator of ICI, Ms Avril Kudzi, mentioned the National Plan of Action for the Elimination of Child Labour and the Family Welfare Policy of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection as some of the policies that government was implementing in an effort to contain child labour in Ghana.
