Deputy Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Mr. Bright Wireko Brobbey, has reiterated the Government's commitment to eliminating all forms of child labour in the country.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) defines child labour as work that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children and/or interferes with their schooling.

A report from the second National Plan of Action (NPA 2) on the elimination of the worst forms of child labour estimated that 21.8 per cent (1.9 million) children aged five and 17, were engaged in child labour. Of this number, more than 1.2 million are involved in hazardous work.

The Deputy Minister said the Government is committed to ensuring that children are sent to school and not to places not meant for them.

He was speaking at a stakeholders’ engagement in Accra to review Ghana’s Hazardous Activities Framework (HAF).

Mr. Wireko Brobbey said: “On this occasion of reviewing the cocoa HAF by seeking inputs from experts, my Ministry reaffirms our continuous support towards the elimination of child labour in all sectors in the country.”

He added that: “We’re particularly interested in the business of finding possible ways towards the elimination of child labour.”

He noted that the review of the HAF and its incorporation into the general HAF would give the country another opportunity to provide a solid foundation in respect to current trends in the world of work and what pertained in the country.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency on the sidelines of the programme, Mrs. Akua Ofori Asumadu, National Project Coordinator, Trade for Decent Work, ILO, said the review was to harmonise all frameworks on child habour.

She said: “Times have changed and things that were not hazardous may be hazardous today. New things have been introduced because of technology, scientific development and innovation. This [review] will help us merge hazardous frameworks of all types, especially, cocoa into the general one.”

Mrs. Asumadu explained that: “some of the determinants of child labour were not clear. For instance, if a child said I do fetch water on a cocoa farm, it is considered hazardous because it was in our HAF. So, we must look at it and weed out the ones that are not child labour.”

She said that ILO is committed to working with MELR to support the government to continue to advocate at all levels to ensure no one was left behind, especially in the cocoa sector, where hazardous activities is dominant.

Developed in 2008, the HAF was to provide a comprehensive, acceptable and contextually relevant hazardous Child Labour Framework for Ghana’s cocoa and other sectors of the economy where child labour was prevalent.

It was to ensure that all children in the cocoa-growing areas were safe, learning and succeeding, and were not working in conditions that endangered their health, welfare and development.

However, there have been some disparities in differentiating between socio-economic practices that were considered to be child work and child labour.

Therefore, the review was to resolve the disparities and provide a general HAF that covered all sectors of the economy and ensured that current trends of labour requirements were met.

It also formed part of intensified efforts in eliminating the worst forms of child labour in cocoa-growing regions and all other sectors of the economy.