Urambo struggles to end child labourBy Gerald Kitabu
13th November 2011EmailPrintCommentsThey work long hours spraying pesticides and carrying heavy loads on the farms and handle dangerous tools. The tasks affect development leading to realising their full potentialities.
They are trapped in this pitiable condition of child labour because of abject poverty of parents in Urambo District and Tabora Region as well as poor learning infrastructures.
As a result, and due to the fact that the schools in the district do not provide food, some children have gone to work on tobacco farms, hoping at least to be able to get something to eat.
“Tobacco farming is labour intensive, it requires huge man power, so in order to maximise profit, plantation owners go for cheap labour; so they ‘import’ as many young children as possible from other areas but the latter are not paid until tobacco purchasing time,” he said.
Urambo is a leading tobacco growing district in Tabora Region, which is also the biggest producer of the crop in the country. In 2008/9, it produced 16 million kilogrammes of tobacco worth Sh41 billion and the following season it produced 23 kilogrammes worth more than Sh66 billion. Estimates for 2010/11 stand at 31 kilogrammes worth Sh71 billion.
Work on tobacco farms is pulling many children away from school. Worse still the working environment is bad.
Justus Molai is the Urambo District Executive Director. In a recent exclusive interview with The Guardian on Sunday, he says they are currently struggling to rescue children employed on different plantations in the district. “For the past three years we’ve rescued about 1,600 children out of more than 3,000 and the work is still going on to make sure that child labour in tobacco farms is eradicated,” he said.
Authorities say the child labourers originate mainly from Singida and Kigoma regions. Despite working in very risky environment, they are paid very low wages or are not paid at all.
Molai says his district has embarked on sensitisation campaigns against child labour and making sure that there is good learning environment for students including school feeding programmes to keep students in schools.
For her part, Vice-President of Elimination of Child Labour in Tobacco growing areas (ECLT), which is working with local organisations in Urambo and Sikonge districts, Barbara Martellini said they have realised that at least one out of eight children involved in labour on the tobacco farms is an orphan.
ECLT is a multi-stakeholder initiative of unions, growers and companies in the tobacco sector, which work together to reduce child labour in the world.
Martellini says child labour in tobacco growing is wrong because it denies children education opportunities, learning about the world and preventing them to develop skills needed to get through life and fulfill their potentials.
She explains that ECLT has worked in Tanzania since January 2004, partnering with several non governmental organisations under ILO coordination in Urambo district on two projects, covering a total of 36 villages. “In the course of working in the districts, we have prevented hundreds of children from entering child labour… 450 families were supported to set up additional income generating activities, 27 schools and one dormitory for girls were built.
“Saving centres were created, health and sanitation structures were provided. Extension services were trained to address child labour and a monitoring system was implemented,” she explains.
Mary Kibogoya, Acting Director of the PROPER, a project supported by ECLT says from July 2011 to December 2015, her project expects to withdraw nearly 6,000 children from child labour while a further 1,800 will be prevented from entering child labour.
SOURCE: GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY
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Showing posts with label Child rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Child rights. Show all posts
Monday, November 14, 2011
Saturday, July 18, 2009
ORPHANS ARE EVERYONES RESPONSIBILITY
Curretly one of my biggest concerns is the increasing number orphans in Tanzania.
Like most developing countries, Tanzania is faced with a huge number of poverty related problems.
This means, like any developing country the government can only do so much for its people. There are no safety nets such as social welfare, general health insurance, free secondary school education or any government plan that can support a person if you can't make money for yourself.
At least if a child has a parent, we can help the parent to learn some skills so that he/she can be able to make money and support his/her children.
But what about the Orphans? Current statistics show that 6 out of 10 children are born with HIV virus. Most parents die at the very early stage of their children lives because HIV virus weakens the immunity, and this makes it easier for the number 1 enemy, Malaria, to kill even faster.
Unfortunatelly there is no magical way to control Malaria, unless we can hold a conference with the Anopheles mosquitos and say ''look here, you have done enough damage,can we make a deal?''
Anyway, our responsibility is to the Orphans. This new generation of young people need our support and all the love we can give, that they will never have from their parents.
Some orphans are lucky enough to get shelter, but at a certain age they have to leave this shelter. They have to leave this shelter at an age when their agemates who have families, are still at home and enjoying the support of their parents in every way. Where should these orphans go? What are they supposed to do with the rest of their lives with no formal education?
The saddest thing is that, when they become street children people avoid them even more.
Once I had to interview street children about their individual lives, and I was devastated to hear about the horrifying places they have to sleep. Most of them have been abused several times and there is no law to protect them. No one takes the word of a street child ...... they are social phariahs which is most unfortunatelly.
For their normal meals, they eat from dumpsters, which doesn't make their immunity system any stronger.
Many of the street children say,sometimes they are so hungry they have to steal food at open markets ... and this might come as a shock to you, but people actually chase and throw stones at the ''thieves'' and if they manage to catch the thief before the police arrive, they beat him/her up so much that you can't see any part of the body because of the bleeding.
Well .... so far this has been a normal situation, but we can start to change that. We can start by raising awareness and forcing people to remove the blinders and start to see orphans and street children as normal children who need love and care and all the other basic needs that normal children receive.
We can also develop networks to support these children to attend secondary school education after they finish basic school. After secondary school at least they will be of an age that they can be supported to learn skills or attend university, and become strong contributing members of the society.
If we don't start to do something now, I shudder to think what kind of future generation we will have in our country or any other developing country with similar problems.
The statistics for orphans become higher every year mainly because of Aids and Malaria.
If you want to support secondary school education for orphans directly you can contact any local primary school and get a list of names for orphans who will be finishing basic school that year.
You can then assit them to continue the next step.
I suggest boarding school scholarships because it is safer for them to live in the enclosed community. Therefore you can consider sponsoring them with one or all of the following:
- Boarding school fee (which for Tanzania is app. 250Eur Per year)
- Books (hardly 50 Eur per year)
- Transport to boarding school from their area of residence (hardly 50 Eur go & return per year)
- Pocket money (Hardly 150 Eur per year for emergensies such as saniray pads, medicine etc).
During holiday season they can also be sponsored to stay in the school dormitories if an extra meal allowance is paid to the school. This is safer for them than the streets.
Alternatively, you can visit our website www.green-waters.org and read project CHANCE and the plan we have for supporting Orphans to continue with secondary school education.
Like most developing countries, Tanzania is faced with a huge number of poverty related problems.
This means, like any developing country the government can only do so much for its people. There are no safety nets such as social welfare, general health insurance, free secondary school education or any government plan that can support a person if you can't make money for yourself.
At least if a child has a parent, we can help the parent to learn some skills so that he/she can be able to make money and support his/her children.
But what about the Orphans? Current statistics show that 6 out of 10 children are born with HIV virus. Most parents die at the very early stage of their children lives because HIV virus weakens the immunity, and this makes it easier for the number 1 enemy, Malaria, to kill even faster.
Unfortunatelly there is no magical way to control Malaria, unless we can hold a conference with the Anopheles mosquitos and say ''look here, you have done enough damage,can we make a deal?''
Anyway, our responsibility is to the Orphans. This new generation of young people need our support and all the love we can give, that they will never have from their parents.
Some orphans are lucky enough to get shelter, but at a certain age they have to leave this shelter. They have to leave this shelter at an age when their agemates who have families, are still at home and enjoying the support of their parents in every way. Where should these orphans go? What are they supposed to do with the rest of their lives with no formal education?
The saddest thing is that, when they become street children people avoid them even more.
Once I had to interview street children about their individual lives, and I was devastated to hear about the horrifying places they have to sleep. Most of them have been abused several times and there is no law to protect them. No one takes the word of a street child ...... they are social phariahs which is most unfortunatelly.
For their normal meals, they eat from dumpsters, which doesn't make their immunity system any stronger.
Many of the street children say,sometimes they are so hungry they have to steal food at open markets ... and this might come as a shock to you, but people actually chase and throw stones at the ''thieves'' and if they manage to catch the thief before the police arrive, they beat him/her up so much that you can't see any part of the body because of the bleeding.
Well .... so far this has been a normal situation, but we can start to change that. We can start by raising awareness and forcing people to remove the blinders and start to see orphans and street children as normal children who need love and care and all the other basic needs that normal children receive.
We can also develop networks to support these children to attend secondary school education after they finish basic school. After secondary school at least they will be of an age that they can be supported to learn skills or attend university, and become strong contributing members of the society.
If we don't start to do something now, I shudder to think what kind of future generation we will have in our country or any other developing country with similar problems.
The statistics for orphans become higher every year mainly because of Aids and Malaria.
If you want to support secondary school education for orphans directly you can contact any local primary school and get a list of names for orphans who will be finishing basic school that year.
You can then assit them to continue the next step.
I suggest boarding school scholarships because it is safer for them to live in the enclosed community. Therefore you can consider sponsoring them with one or all of the following:
- Boarding school fee (which for Tanzania is app. 250Eur Per year)
- Books (hardly 50 Eur per year)
- Transport to boarding school from their area of residence (hardly 50 Eur go & return per year)
- Pocket money (Hardly 150 Eur per year for emergensies such as saniray pads, medicine etc).
During holiday season they can also be sponsored to stay in the school dormitories if an extra meal allowance is paid to the school. This is safer for them than the streets.
Alternatively, you can visit our website www.green-waters.org and read project CHANCE and the plan we have for supporting Orphans to continue with secondary school education.
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