Takoradi, June 13, GNA - Mr Charles Asante Bempong, Project Manager of the Ghana Employers Association (GEA) has called on business establishments to have greater interest in the fight against child labour by refusing to employ children below 18 years.

He said employers, who have engaged children, should ensure that they were disengaged and if possible visit schools and join other organizations to press for greater support and educational programmes for children. Mr Bempong said this at Takoradi to mark this year's World Day Against Child Labour organized by GEA under the theme: "Ghana Go For Goal: End Child Labour".

He said the GEA Child Labour Project aims at creating awareness and understanding of the characteristics and consequences of child labour. He said employers, who did not employ children, had a better chance of raising their productivity, gaining access to the international market and reducing their medical bills.

Mr Bempong said the GEA had developed a code of conduct on child labour and asked business establishments to insert clauses on child labour in their Collective Bargaining Agreements.

He said the GEA Child Labour Project in Commercial Agriculture started 2004 at the Benso Oil Palm Plantation (BOPP), Twifo Oil Palm Plantation (TOPP), Ghana Rubber Estates Limited (GREL), Norpalm Ghana Limited and the Ghana Oil Palm Development Company. Mr Bempong said the project was also being carried out in the mining sector with the collaboration of the Tarkwa-Nsuaem District Assembly and some selected mining companies including Anglogold Ashanti, Goldfields Ghana and Goldstar Resources.

He said children were sometimes used in illegal mining of mineral resources which explained why the project focus is on Galamsey. Mr Abdulai Zakari, Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Coordinating Director said government has put in place a number of pragmatic programmes to address child labour in its efforts to eliminate the practice. In an address read for him by Mr Mohammed Ali, Presiding Member of the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly, Mr Zakari said the programmes include the adoption of comprehensive policies to reduce poverty, increase access to education and school enrolment and improvement in the quality of education.

He said the Capitation grant, Free Compulsory and Universal Basic Education and the School Feeding Programme were part of the efforts to mitigate and eradicate child labour.

Mr Zakari said other areas worth mentioning where government was collaborating with development partners were the Child Trafficking/LUTRENA Project, Human Trafficking Project, West Africa Cocoa and Commercial Agriculture Project (WACAP), Decent Work, HIV/AIDS, the Time Bound Programme and the National Programme for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour in Cocoa (NEPPOLC). 13 June 10