Twenty-four youth drawn from Tema Manhean and Kpone have completed a year's skills training aimed at curbing the worst forms of child labour in the Tema municipality.

The trainees, aged between 13 and 18, received skills in hair beauty, dressmaking, auto spraying, photography, fabric knitting and carpentry under 15 master crafts persons.

Action Programme Coordinator of Partners in Development, an NGO,Kwasi Amenuvor said none of them had formal education beyond JSS and that majority of the girls were sexually active as most of them depended on men for survival.

He said the programme, which is supported by the International Labour Organization (ILO) went through the process of identifying, counselling and providing children from marine-fishing communities with employable vocational skills, literacy and other livelihood.

Touching on the challenges of the programme, Mr Amenuvor said the main challenge was keeping to the work plan due to the slow rate at which stakeholders especially parents understood the project as some of them gave conditions before releasing their children for the training.

He said "the attitude of getting quick money and no time to learn skills" was also a challenge. Some of the participants have no guardians to guarantee their continued participation in the training.

To ensure that trainees would not return to fishing and fish mongering as well as immoral lifestyles, Mr Amenuvor promised the NGO's preparedness to link participants to micro credit institutions for capital to start their own business.

Tema Municipal Chief Executive, Mr David Quaye Annang, said in a speech read on his behalf that the government had initiated interventions, both directly and indirectly, towards the fight against child labour.

"Children constitute the core of any country's human capital, and the price to pay for neglecting the development of children to chance cannot be risked by any serious government," he said.

Source: GNA