Accra, June 12, GNA - Ghana on Friday commemorated the World Day Against Child Labour with a durbar to raise awareness and provide the platform for a call to action on the urgent need to eliminate all forms of child labour.

The celebration, under the theme: "Give Girls a Chance: End Child Labour," further stressed the need to intensify advocacy on equal access and opportunities in educating girls and ensuring they attained higher completion levels in education.

Mr Stephen Amoanor Kwao, Minister for Employment and Social Welfare (MESW), in a keynote address said although a lot had been achieved nine years after Ghana's efforts to eliminate the Worst Forms of Child Labour (WFCL) and give equal opportunities to both boys and girls in education, most girls still faced challenges in their education. He said some girls still faced multiple challenges, with burdens of having to combine household chores with economic activities and school attendance.

This had led to dropouts for most of them because of parental choices, socio-cultural factors and poverty. The Minister said it had been established globally that educating girls was very crucial to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goal 3 on promoting gender equality and empowerment of women. He said this was because their acquisition of knowledge could impact positively on reducing poverty and other health conditions as well as socio-economic problems.

Mr Kwao said the current global statistics of an estimated 218 million child-labourers, with 100 million being girls, was alarming. "About 53 million of these are exposed to hazardous works such as domestic labourers, street hawkers and head porters (Kayayee). Worst of all, some are victims of bonded servitude such as the Trokosi, prostitution and production of pornography," Mr Kwao said. He said government with support from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) had created conducive environments to address the problem since 2000.

The Minister mentioned the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE), Capitation Grant and School Feeding Programme, as some of the interventions to increase school enrolments and alleviate part of the economic burden of parents and guardians. Mr Kwao said government had also addressed the problem of child labour through the improvement of various policies, legislations, sensitisation and social mobilisation, capacity building at all levels and improvement of knowledge-base.

He said government intended to adopt comprehensive policies to reduce poverty, increase access and enrolment as well as improve the quality of education to ensure progress in efforts to deal with the problem.

"Child labour has been mainstreamed into the GPRS II and the guidelines of the Medium Term Development Plans of all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) for adequate government support to implement interventions to effectively deal with the WFCL. Mr Kwao said the ILO's Global Action Plan to eliminate the WFCL by the year 2016 required commitment and action by all stakeholders. He said to ensure a more holistic and frontal attack on child labour, government was collaborating with the ILO and IPEC to develop a seven-year comprehensive National Plan of Action to address child labour in all sectors from 2009 to 2015.

Mr Kwao said it would be an integrated framework for tackling the child labour problem in a coordinated and sustainable manner. He called for increased commitment by all stakeholders including parents, teachers, the media and children in educating communities and sensitising them on the importance of girls' education in poverty reduction and the attainment of MDG 3.

Ms Akua Sena Dansua, Minister for Women and Children's Affairs (MOWAC), blamed the continuous poverty cycle among various families and communities on their failure to educate the girls and admit the fact that they were major agents of national development. She said it could be logical to some extent that an uneducated girl would also fail to send her children to school due to lack of interest or realisation of the important role of education in poverty reduction. Ms Dansua expressed worry over situations where government and non-governmental organisations had extended support in terms of skill development and seed capital to a large number of women and girls, especially in the cities, to enable them to go back to their hometowns and work, but they had remained on the streets. She said there was the need to research into why those people had consistently refused to heed the plea of government to leave the streets after putting them into positions that would enable them to enter into profitable businesses.

Ms Dansua called for coordination of efforts and activities by various bodies, as there were currently too many agencies and organisations performing the same functions.

Mr Jonathan Tackie-Komme, Member of Parliament for Odododiodioo, commended IN Network Ghana (INNG), formerly International Needs Ghana, for providing counselling, prevention and withdrawal of 613 children from commercial sexual exploitation since 2004.

He said contribution of the organisation to Kpeshie, Ablekuma South and Ashiedu-Keteke Sub-Metropolitan Assemblies was enormous and had contributed to the placement of a large number of children in formal basic schools, with the provision of school uniforms, bags and educational materials.