Lilongwe — Without elleviating poverty and giving greater priority to proper education and employment in the country, child labour will never be eliminated, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) representative for Malawi, Louis Ndaba Hagamye, has said.

During a press briefing at a commeration of Child Labour Day recently, Hagamye said only the end of poverty would properly eliminate child labour and other abuses.

Speaking in Mchinji, he said: 'Surveys have shown that most children in the country are exposed to all sorts of abuse besides child labour, and this is because of poverty. Therefore, without alleviating poverty Malawi and other countries will not manage to alleviate child labour.' He also spoke of a survey jointly undertaken by the ILO and the Ministry of Labour that shows at least 3.8 million children in Africa are working and, of these, 1.4 million are doing so in an exploitative manner.

'We know some of the causes of child labour in Malawi are poverty, ignorance, parental death, lack of family care, peer pressure and the HIV/AIDS pandemic but poverty cannot be alleviated if work is done by young children,' said Hagamye, who also represents Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Labour Minister Lilian Patel concurred with Hagamye, saying that many children are being exloited in the industries of agriculture, fishing, domestic work, construction, mining, quarrying, vending, prostituion and transport.

'Working children in Malawi have less opportunity to attend school. They are susceptible to an unfair working environment, they are physically abused and girls are more vulnerable to sexual abuse,' said Patel, adding that one in every six children aged between 5 and17 is involved in child labour.

She also said that 62 % of children work on family farms and 19% are doing four or more hours of domestic work a day. This is on top of the 27% of children who are working for somebody other than a relative, paid or unpaid, for many hours a day.

Speaking at the conference sponsored by the Labour Ministry and UNICEF, Patel said that if a child works, their right to freedom of expression and to education and leisue time was often seriously damaged.

Protection from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse was also severely diminished.

In an attempt to tackle child exploitation, the government has held conventions and drawn up guidelines on issues such as the minimum age children should be deemed employable and how to aleviate the worst instances of child abuse.

Other organisations, such as the Association for the Elimination of Child Labour have, in the past, also called for more practical help to be given.

In a joint project with the Tobacco Association of Malawi (TAMA), the association built a primary school which 400 pupils currently attend, setting an example for the rest of Malawi to follow.