Winneba, March 10, GNA - The Awutu-Effutu-Senya District Assembly has signed a memorandum of understanding with the International Labour Organization (ILO) to fight child labour and other forms of practices undermining the rights of children.

They include, child trafficking, child fishing, ritual servitude, child prostitution, trokosi, child domestic servitude, Kayayei, commercial agriculture, mining and quarrying.

Mr. Solomon Kwashie Abbam-Quaye, District Chief Executive (DCE), signed for the Assembly while Ms Yaa Yeboah, Chief Technical Adviser of the ILO International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour, endorsed for ILO.

Mr. Kwame Mensah, Project Officer ILO, Mr. Ashalley Djane, Deputy District Co-ordinating Director and Mr. Kwesi

Esseku, Presiding Member of the District Assembly, were at the signing.

Giving an overview of the project to support the Ghana Time-Bound Programme (TBP), which seeks to wage a war on child labour issues, Ms Yeboah, called on the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), to embark on a programme to educate Ghanaians on the dangers of child labour.

She said the ILO would continue to support the initiative and charged the Assembly to identify communities where cases of child labour were rampant to check them.

Ms Yeboah said the objective of the ILO under the Time-Bound Programme was to ensure total freedom for children from poor homes to enable them to go to school.

The ILO Technical Adviser was not happy that some parents exposed their children to slavery in the name of poverty, adding that this was not the situation in some countries in similar conditions.

Mr. Solomon Abbam-Quaye, said unless the younger generations were placed in a better perspective the future would continue to be bleak.

He charged members of the District Child Labour Elimination Committee to be more proactive in tackling issues of child abuse and promised that the Assembly would make efforts to eliminate all forms of child labour and said sustainable economic interventions must be put in place to check poverty, which had been identified as the bane of child labour.

Mr. Ashalley-Djane, Deputy District Co-ordinating Director, said areas in the district with the worse record of child included Winneba, Senya-Beraku, Kasoa, Jei-Krodua, Awutu-Bawjiase, Awutu-Bontrase.