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Child Labour, Are we wrong in Ghana?
Samuel Dowuona
The definition of child labour as contained in the
International Labour Organization (ILO) Child Labour
Convention, Ghana Children’s Act 1998 (Act 560), and indeed
Article 28 of the 1992 Constitution, which is focuses on
Child Labour, clearly captures children in commercial
agriculture. In fact commercial agriculture is listed as one
of the worse forms of child labour (WFCL).
Statistics available at the ILO Ghana Office indicate that
1.3 million of the 6.4 million children in Ghana involved in
child labour, as high as 57% of them are engaged in
commercial agriculture, forestry and hunting.
Simply put, commercial agriculture is the cultivation of
cash other than food crops – or if you like, an agricultural
activity strictly meant for commercial other than
subsistence purposes.
Cocoa is top on the list of cash crops in this country. As a
matter of fact in Ghana, cocoa is THE CASH CROP. To wit,
nobody cultivates cocoa in Ghana for any other purpose,
domestic or subsistence other than commercial.
Obviously when one engages the services of children on a
cocoa plantation the law and international conventions like
the ILO Convention on Child Labour, to which Ghana is a
signatory, calls it “children in commercial agriculture” and
that is child labour, no matter the intensity of work the
child does on that plantation and no matter how large or
small the plantation is.
In spite of the existence of that international protocol,
the Children’s Act and Article 28 of the 1992 Constitution,
it is still a very common practice in Ghana to see children
below the age of 18, working on farms with their parents. In
fact even our first President Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah
took pride in the fact that he used to work on his father’s
farm as a child. I am sure many men and women of substance
in Ghana share that credential with him.
Whiles for some Ghanaians, working on the farm as a child is
just for fun, for the large majority, it is actually a
necessity. Indeed it is a way of life. At least that is the
argument of some nationalists who would rather want to
maintain that it is part of our culture for parents to train
their children in farming skills in addition to whatever
formal education the children acquire or require from
schooling.
Recently the Minister of Tourism and Diasporan Relations,
Jake Otanka Obetsebi Lamptey strongly debunked claims by the
international community that Ghanaian cocoa farmers employed
children to work on large cocoa plantations and for that
matter our farmers were violating the international and
domestic laws against child labour.
The minister argued that more than 90 per cent of cocoa
plantations in Ghana are small family holdings and not large
plantations as our accusers falsely claimed. Moreover the
children who work on the farms do so as a matter of
household chores and not as jobs, in that they do menial
work on the cocoa farms after school and on weekends.
The rationale of his argument is that so long as the
children do not work on large plantations, and the work they
do on the farms does not affect their education, health and
general development in any negative way, we can describe it
as child labour.
Indeed, if the minister’s claim is really so, then at first
glance he is not far from right because the law clearly
distinguishes between the concepts of child work and child
labour.
According to the law, child labour other than child work is
any kind of job that negatively affects the child’s
education, health and general development.
So, if the child does any kind of work that helps him or her
to develop additional skills to his or her formal education
that is child work, which is different from child labour,
which impacts the child’s general development negatively.
For instance, whereas a child hawking on busy streets is
child labour, hawking within one’s vicinity (from house to
house), where there are no motorists and after school table
top trading for children are child work which helps the
child develop accounting and trading skills.
Personally I think helping our parents or guardians at home
after school to do some less burdensome household chores is
child work and not child labour. There are more.
The minister’s argument is that most children working on
cocoa farms do so after school and as household chores so
their parents could not be accused of child labour, even
though he would agree that cocoa farming is commercial
agriculture, which is clearly described by the law as child
labour.
I have personally had a dialogue with some literate folk in
this country on this same matter and was surprised to learn
that most of our literate folk had at one point in their
childhood worked on their parents’ cocoa farms and they
considered that as a learning experience rather than a
burdensome labour.
The argument there was that, their parents’ sweat on the
farms to send them to school and so it was only fair that
anytime they returned from school, they had to lend a
helping hand.
Indeed the practice is replicated in even the non-farming
communities where children join their parents in trading,
fishing and other forms of commercial activities as a matter
of necessity. In some cases, the children actually need to
do that in order to raise some money to support their
parents to provide for them (the children).
If you live in such communities, you often heard parents
threaten their children who refuse to join in the family
business with statements like “if you do not send these
items on hawking there will be no money for you to take to
school tomorrow morning.”
I remember there came a time in my life as a child, my
brothers and I had to travel between Osu and Accra Central
Business District everyday on foot to sell rubber bags just
to help my parents make ends meet for the family. It was a
necessary for us then, just as it is for many children
today. We also sold pieces of aluminum scrap to make money
to buy clothes and shoes for ourselves. It was fun though.
But its very much a necessity.
One senior educated woman told me that when she used to work
on her father’s cocoa plantation, she was never made to do
more than her strength allowed. She said she only carried
loads commensurate with her age and strength and never
heavier.
Admittedly I am not against that culture of belonging in
Ghana, where the whole family, children and adults alike
join in the family business to see it flourish for the
benefit of all. But the law is very emphatic on what is
child labour and what is not.
The international conventions ratified by our governments
and the national laws on children’s rights and child labour
clearly lists children in commercial agriculture and for
that matter cocoa farming as child labour.
The coordinators of International Programme on the
Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) of the ILO in Ghana argue
that unless the Ghanaian government changes her position on
the international conventions and amend the national laws to
exclude commercial agriculture from the list of WFCL it
would remain WRONG for anyone to use children on cocoa
farms, no matter how menial the work they do.
Indeed laws are not just for the books but to be implemented
and in this case the law is against children working on
cocoa farms and we need to uphold it as a nation instead of
behaving like ostriches and pretending the law should apply
in one case and not in the other.
The question I want to ask the minister of tourism and those
who argue that children working on cocoa farms do menial
jobs, is who determines what is a menial job and what is not
? Besides what is the definition of menial job?
Is it possible for instance, for those who use child labour
on the Volta Lake as divers, to argue that the children have
been trained for it and so we cannot say that they are being
subjected to child labour? Can they claim that the children
are not made to do what is beyond their skills and strength
so therefore they are not in labour?
What about those who send their children hawking on the
streets, kayayo, truck pushing, industrial work, galamsey,
domestic servitude and other seemingly harmless activities
listed as child labour? Can they also argue that those
activities do not affect the children negatively as the law
claims? Where do we draw the line?
I am sure we all do agree that using children in commercial
sex, ritual servitude, drug peddling and child trafficking
are obvious culprits of child labour, but because the others
seem harmless we could probably argue against their
inclusion in the list of WFCL.
There is probably only one way to lay all these to rest,
Ghana must be bold to opt out of the signatories of the ILO
Child Labour Convention, amend Article 28 of the 1992 and
the Children’s Act (Act 560), 1998 to exclude all the
activities that we think are culturally part of us from the
list of WFCL. Otherwise we owe it a duty to our children to
ensure that we keep them out of all activities listed as
child labour wherever and whenever they occur .
Samuel
Dowuonah, February 11, 2007
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