Kumasi, July 25, GNA - About two million Ghanaian children are engaged in various forms of child labour, a Ghana Child Labour Survey has indicated.

Mr Kwaku Kyei, Country Director of African Network for the Prevention and Protection Against Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN), Ghana, who announced this, said they were engaged in various sectors including commercial, agriculture, fishing, weaving, carving, truck pushing and pottery.

He was speaking at a stakeholders meeting to address the child labour situation in the Ashanti Region in Kumasi on Monday. Participants at the meeting organised by ANPPCAN were from Kwabre, Bosomtwe-Atwima-Kwanwoma, Amansie West and Obuasi municipality. Mr Kyei said child labour was a growing phenomenon in developing countries and stressed that an estimated 218 million children were engaged in various forms of labour globally.

He said ANPPCAN Ghana, Child Labour Programme focused on addressing among other issues, child labour in Ghana in general and in Ashanti Region in particular.
Mr Bernard Morara, Exchange Programmes Officer in Kenya, hinted that the ANPPCAN project in Ghana targeted children aged between five and 17 years who were already involved in working various sector of the economy.
He said at the heart of the project was the withdrawal of children involved in child labour and re-integrating them into school and supporting them to remain in school.
Mr Morara said ANPPCAN Ghana believed that by expanding educational opportunities, facilitating access and quality of education and training of children as well as mobilising communities against child labour, would go a long way to minimise the problems in the targeted districts. He said statistics from the population census of 2000 showed that over 60,000 children of school-going-age failed to enrol in school in the targeted districts.
Mrs Beatrice Prempeh, Amansie West District Director of Education in a contribution, said she was happy that the organisation had come to the District to assist in solving child labour issues because a lot of the children were suffering from this social problem.
Miss Virginia Tyler, an American who works with Brass Casters in Kumasi, said children should not be allowed to work during school hours to the detriment of their proper development.
Mr Emmanuel Anniboye, Kwabre District Director of the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE), said child labour was rooted in the cultural practices and there was the need for stakeholders to look at it critically.