General News of Tuesday, 24 May 2005

Source: GNA

Mothers of "Kayayee" appealed for infrastructure

Waribogu (NR), May 24, GNA - Women in Waribogu, a farming community in the Tolon/Kumbungu District, have appealed to the government and other bodies working to eliminate child labour to provide structures in rural communities to ensure that children trained, especially common load careers, ''Kayayee'', stayed in the community.

They said providing structures in the cities for training the girls was not serving the real purpose because when they go back to their communities, they do not have any structures to use and are compelled to go back to the cities.

The women made the appeal during an interaction with Mr Emmanuel Otoo, ILO/IPEC Country Programme Coordinator (Ghana) who is on a three-day visit to the northern region.

The visit was to access child labour issues and to see how best ILO/IPEC could fast truck efforts to eliminate child labour particularly from mines and quarries.

The visit was also to monitor activities and to interact with students that ILO/IPEC is supporting in the district to complete school and to provide technical capacity for RAINS, collaborators of ILO/IPEC programmes.

The women said many of the ''Kayayee'' come from the Tolon/Kumbungu District has many of the girls and those trained and brought back to the district go back to the cities.

They said they were playing their roles as mothers to ensure that their children went to school instead going for ''Kayayee'' and called on the government and child rights advocates to step up their efforts to end child labour as well as child trafficking.

Mr Abdul Samed Seidu, Acting Programs Manager of RAINS, a Tamale-based NGO collaborating with ILO/IPEC to fight child labour, said RAINS is working in 10 districts of the Northern Region to support girls to have education up to the tertiary level.