There are 1.8 million child labourers in Ghana, according to the latest Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS6) reported by the Ghana Statistical Service in 2014. This is unacceptable. Our constitution establishes child labour as an abuse of the fundamental human rights of the child. Article 28 (2) of the 1992 Constitutions is unequivocal: every child has the right to be protected from work that constitutes a threat to his health education or development.
Since 2000 when Ghana ratified the ILO convention on the worst forms of child labour, there have been many interventions to deal with the menace. Some achievements have been made but progress is generally slow because of many factors.
One major challenge in the design and implementation of child labour interventions is the need to properly target the problem areas and to address the root causes in an accountable manner. This is why the approach used by the General Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) of TUC-Ghana, is worth encouraging.
GAWU is implementing a child labour intervention in Torkor, an inland fishing community in the Kpando district of the Volta Region. The intervention is conceptualized on the Fundamental Principles and rights at Work (FPRW) as elaborated by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
These principles are in four categories namely freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining, the elimination of forced or compulsory labour, the abolition of child labour and the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.
The Tokor Model, as the GAWU intervention is nick-named, is hinged on organising and mobilising fish workers (including fishermen and fish processing women) and employers ( boat/canoe owners) by equipping them with the relevant knowledge, skills and motivation to combat child labour, enhance their productivity and share their experiences with national and international partners.
The Torkor model reinforces the fact that fighting child labour in any sector is best done by those directly engaged in the immediate context. These are the informal workers and employers. Thus in the fishing sector the fishermen, canoe/boat owners and the fish processes and sellers are those directly engaged in the context. They are those who react with child labour. They are the actual reactants in the development reaction that produces child labour as a by product and livelihood as the main product. All other actors are regarded as facilitators or catalyst and not the actual reactants. Thus, resources are most efficiently spent if used directly to empower the reactants.
Thus in Torkor, GAWU has organized local fishermen to form the GAWU local Union and the inland Canoe Fishers Association (ICFA). This organisation is empowering the workers to drive the child labour elimination process. GAWU has also mobilised the women who buy, process and retail the fish. These are the actors along the fish supply chain where child labouroccus.
They are being sensitised to feel the consequences of child labour on the health education and development of the children they see every day in their community.
They are not given a mere head knowledge awareness. The sensitisation in done through mutual sharing of the experiences encountered with a child labourer. It’s a real life sensitisation platform.
It is not a hotel-setting workshop or technical seminar on text-book theory on child labour. These fishermen see the children recruited and trafficked away from home, haboured and abused by slave masters, hardened and criminalised through mixing with delinquent adults, drown and die in the lake. GAWU’s approach is to bring to bear on their conscience the evil of child labour and the opportunities to stop it. Many of them are victims of child labour themselves, and have grown into poor adults who must struggle to survive and keep their families.
They have limited opportunities today because they lost childhood opportunities for education, play and the acquisition of competitive skills. They wouldn’t want this to happen to any child within their sphere of influence.
This kind of sensitisation, carried out at the very site of child labour on the banks of the Volta Lake would spur rational men into action against the menace.
It is different from sensationalism; where imageries are used to tickle the senses for a short time of effect. Sensitisation, in the Torkor Model is coupled with ready organisation and immediate long term action. This approach stimulates the social infrastructure required to bring real change and transformation.