Accra porters among army of child workers

ACCRA – Balancing a large white tin basin on her tiny frame, 14-year-old Nafisa Adams toils as a porter in Accra’s teeming markets from four o’clock in the morning.

She is one of hundreds of porters, known locally as ‘kayayei’, whose sinewy arms and legs keep the Ghanaian capital’s trading centres working, day-in, day-out. Nafisa fetches and carries for vendors selling wares ranging from clothes, pots and shoes to dried fish and other food.As nations marked the World Day against Child Labour yesterday, millions of children like Nafisa around the planet were pending their childhood years in long hours of sweat and toil, working in markets, on farms or as domestic servants.One year ago, Nafisa, the second eldest of five children, made the long journey with another sister from Walewale in northern Ghana to work in the West African country’s capital.”My mother had no money,” she explained.Eyes glistening, she says she misses home.”My mother didn’t want me to come …But I am looking for money.There is more money here than in the village,” she added.In Ghana alone, about 1,2 million of the country’s roughly six million children are engaged in activities classified as child labour, about 242 000 of them working in hazardous conditions, according to a 2003 survey commissioned by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).About 57 per cent of these working children are employed in agriculture, forestry and fishing.CHILDREN & CHOCOLATE Many take the path Nafisa took, travelling from Ghana’s dry and poor Sahelian north to the richer and greener south.Some are trafficked for profit to work as domestics or porters.Experts say that once these children become engaged in wage-earning economic activity, it is difficult to get them back to school, even when primary education is free, as in Ghana.”When they get money in their hand, they become business children.They no longer think of school.Having tasted money, they do not go back,” ILO country programme manager Matthew Dally told Reuters.He said most of the Ghanaian government’s attention was focused on trying to end child labour on cocoa farms, where the beans from which chocolate is made are harvested.”It is because of the political and international dimensions of cocoa …Cocoa is the backbone of the economy,” Dally said.Since media reports of child labour on West African cocoa farms first emerged several years ago, the chocolate industry and African governments have been under pressure from child rights campaigners to stop children working on plantations.Between them, Ivory Coast and Ghana produce two-thirds of the world’s cocoa.Rights groups have said that thousands of children, some as young as five and some trafficked from impoverished neighbouring states, may be working on farms.As campaigners urge consumers in the developed world not to buy chocolate that may have been produced by child “slave labour”, Ivory Coast and Ghana have both said this year they are on track to meet targets aimed at eradicating the phenomenon.After chocolate makers missed a 2005 certification deadline, they are now working to meet a July 2008 industry target to monitor labour conditions on 50 per cent of West African farms.Cocoa officials and industry chiefs say some reports of “child slaves” on cocoa farms are exaggerated and argue that children helping their parents in work is an important way of supplementing family income in the world’s poorest continent.The ILO’s Dally said keeping children in school was the key to keeping them out of work.Primary school education has been free in Ghana since 2005, but the sharp rise in enrolment has stretched the system’s meagre resources.Many newly enrolled pupils turn up to find there are not enough books, chairs or teachers to go around.Asked whether she would like to go to school, Nafisa laughs.She makes 10 000 cedis (about N$7,20) a day portering, much of which she is saving for the day she can return north.At night, she sleeps on cardboard and rough blue plastic on a stretch of pavement she shares with dozens of other women and children.Stacks of white basins guard their sleeping space, lit by a fluorescent light, as African hip hop music fills the air.Nampa-ReutersNafisa fetches and carries for vendors selling wares ranging from clothes, pots and shoes to dried fish and other food.As nations marked the World Day against Child Labour yesterday, millions of children like Nafisa around the planet were pending their childhood years in long hours of sweat and toil, working in markets, on farms or as domestic servants.One year ago, Nafisa, the second eldest of five children, made the long journey with another sister from Walewale in northern Ghana to work in the West African country’s capital.”My mother had no money,” she explained.Eyes glistening, she says she misses home.”My mother didn’t want me to come …But I am looking for money.There is more money here than in the village,” she added.In Ghana alone, about 1,2 million of the country’s roughly six million children are engaged in activities classified as child labour, about 242 000 of them working in hazardous conditions, according to a 2003 survey commissioned by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).About 57 per cent of these working children are employed in agriculture, forestry and fishing.CHILDREN & CHOCOLATE Many take the path Nafisa took, travelling from Ghana’s dry and poor Sahelian north to the richer and greener south.Some are trafficked for profit to work as domestics or porters.Experts say that once these children become engaged in wage-earning economic activity, it is difficult to get them back to school, even when primary education is free, as in Ghana.”When they get money in their hand, they become business children.They no longer think of school.Having tasted money, they do not go back,” ILO country programme manager Matthew Dally told Reuters.He said most of the Ghanaian government’s attention was focused on trying to end child labour on cocoa farms, where the beans from which chocolate is made are harvested.”It is because of the political and international dimensions of cocoa …Cocoa is the backbone of the economy,” Dally said.Since media reports of child labour on West African cocoa farms first emerged several years ago, the chocolate industry and African governments have been under pressure from child rights campaigners to stop children working on plantations.Between them, Ivory Coast and Ghana produce two-thirds of the world’s cocoa.Rights groups have said that thousands of children, some as young as five and some trafficked from impoverished neighbouring states, may be working on farms.As campaigners urge consumers in the developed world not to buy chocolate that may have been produced by child “slave labour”, Ivory Coast and Ghana have both said this year they are on track to meet targets aimed at eradicating the phenomenon.After chocolate makers missed a 2005 certification deadline, they are now working to meet a July 2008 industry target to monitor labour conditions on 50 per cent of West African farms.Cocoa officials and industry chiefs say some reports of “child slaves” on cocoa farms are exaggerated and argue that children helping their parents in work is an important way of supplementing family income in the world’s poorest continent.The ILO’s Dally said keeping children in school was the key to keeping them out of work.Primary school education has been free in Ghana since 2005, but the sharp rise in enrolment has stretched the system’s meagre resources.Many newly enrolled pupils turn up to find there are not enough books, chairs or teachers to go around.Asked whether she would like to go to school, Nafisa laughs.She makes 10 000 cedis (about N$7,20) a day portering, much of which she is saving for the day she can return north.At night, she sleeps on cardboard and rough blue plastic on a stretch of pavement she shares with dozens of other women and children.Stacks of white basins guard their sleeping space, lit by a fluorescent light, as African hip hop music fills the air.Nampa-Reuters