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Child labour concerns

Mar 26, 2010 Editorial

Over the last three years, the Ministry of Labour has worked assiduously with a number of organisations, both local and international, to get a handle on the prevalence of child labour in Guyana and to deal appropriately with its effects. In 2007, the Educare Guyana program, funded by the US Department of Labour and executed by the Partners of America, conducted a study that indicated roughly twenty-six percent of Guyanese children engaged in work of some form or another.
The report noted that, “Children in Guyana work as porters, domestic servants, street vendors, and wait staff in bars and restaurants. Some are found working in sawmills and markets. The work done in sawmills includes fetching sawdust, cutting timber, and operating machinery used to shape logs, while the work done in markets mainly consists of selling goods. Children are known to work in mining and the illicit drug trade.
There are reports of sexual exploitation of children in Guyana, including prostitution.” The latter groups fall under the category of the “Worst Forms of Child Labour”, of which Educare Guyana Project Director, Edward Dunham noted that “only isolated cases were found.”
The laws of Guyana provide that every child between the ages of six to fifteen should be in school and that children under the age of fifteen cannot be employed. The minimum working age had been raised in 1994 from fourteen to fifteen. In the years since 2007, the Ministry has mounted a vigorous campaign to crack down on illegal practices.
Through the Tackling Child Labour through Education (TACKLE) programme, the Ministry highlighted the requirements of the law on child labour to communities and emphasised the penalties that could be imposed for its violation.
The Ministry also beefed up its work inspection unit and announced last year that while in 2006, there were 900 inspections, by 2008 the number jumped to 3,000. For the first half of 2009, the number of inspections had already exceeded 2,000. However, the Ministry of Labour said earlier this year that there have only been three reported cases of child labour in the past three years. At that time, two six-month promotional programmes were launched with the use of the mass media targeting the vulnerable market and stelling areas. The “Child Care and Protection Agency” legislation was passed on January 8, 2009, and was later assented to by President Bharrat Jagdeo. The Child Care and Protection Agency was launched on July 29 to serve as the oversight and management committee for the Children’s Bill.
Children that are working end up frequently not fulfilling their schooling obligations. The problem is that children may be working either because their families are mired in poverty or because they are not academically inclined. To simply insist that children not be employed does not really solve the underlying problems.
As Educare observed, the dilemma with those in the 11-14 group is that intervention programs cannot be implemented because the law declares unambiguously that the children must be in school.
Those children in the age group that may desire to be trained in some kind of trade such as auto mechanic etc., thus end up breaking the law. Such training is not defined as “education” and we may have ended up throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It would appear that this type of thinking is behind the recent announcement by Minister of Labour Manzoor Nadir that he is contemplating revisiting the legislation to maybe allow youths to be employed under stipulated conditions from the age of thirteen.
The Minister said, “I do feel that we should relook at the legislation so that these young persons may be allowed to work under some conditions. For example – limiting the hours of work to 3-4 hours; no work beyond 5 pm; only light work to be done and no work with hazardous chemicals or environment.” The Minister took pains to point out that he welcomed a public discussion on the issue.
We do not believe that there should be any knee-jerk rejection of the Minister’s proposal. We in Guyana must tailor our laws to match our specific circumstances. Let the debate begin.

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