General News of Tuesday, 19 January 2010

Source: GNA

Child labour is a social canker, director

Duayaw-Nkwanta (B/A), Jan. 19, GNA - A one-day workshop on worst forms of child labour in cocoa growing areas has ended at

Duayaw-Nkwanta in the Tano North District. It was attended by 60 community child labour protection committee members drawn from 10 cocoa growing areas in the district and

was organised by Aid for Change Ghana, an NGO in collaboration with the district assembly. Closing the workshop Mr. Joseph Kwabena Obeng, Deputy District Coordinating Director, said child labour had become a societal canker

that needed urgent measures to eradicate it. He said: "Like a disease, if it is allowed to continue most of our children of school-going age would become liabilities of the state". Barima Akwasi Amankwa, a resource person, appealed to parents to enrol their children in school and to provide them with basic

teaching and learning materials. He reminded parents of Article 3 of the International Labour Organisation convention 182, of which Ghana is a signatory that states

that any parent found in the sale and child trafficking would be made to face the full rigours of the law.