Accra, June 11, GNA - Challenging Heights, an advocacy group against child labour, has expressed disappointment at the increasing rate at which young children are being engaged to work under the worst forms of child labour, several years after the promulgation of the Children's Act (Act 560).

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency on Monday ahead of the celebration of the World Day against Child Labour on June 12, Mr James Kofi Annan, Founder/Executive Director of Challenging Heights, said it was disheartening to see children as young as five years engaged in fishing, quarrying, mining and selling on the streets. Section 89 of the Children's Act pegs the minimum age at which a person could be engaged in hazardous work at 18 years. "Yet under our watchful eyes, we see children as young as five years engaged in fishing, quarry, farming, mining, selling on the streets, among others," he said.

Mr. Annan added that an estimated six million children were believed to be engaged in child labour in Ghana. According to him there was the urgent need to enforce laws governing the employment of children if the country wanted to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Mr Annan commended government for the institution of the school feeding program and capitation grant, saying they would help to encourage child enrolment in schools and thereby prevent child labour. He said since these two policies were in place, there was no need for parents to cite poverty as an excuse in hiring out their children for exploitative labour.

Mr Annan called for stiffer punishment for parents who hired the children out for exploitative work as well as for employers who used them.

"As an adult, and several years after running away from Yeji, I am still yet to completely overcome the trauma I went through at the hands of adults who handled me at the time. And as a victim of such exploitation, I say with firm conviction that exposing children to early work is not the best way to grow," he added.

He referred to his experience as a child fisherman, who endured one of the worst forms of child labour - fishing - from the age of 6 to 13 years but was able to break the cycle through perseverance and hard work to obtain university education.

"If I can rise to become a University graduate and a banker, winning global awards at Barclays Bank of Ghana, then every child is capable of rising to any height of his/her choice," he stressed.