Tabitha Mvula
15 March 2005
Lusaka — IT is a threat to the nation when children drop out of school and enter the labour force, International Labour Organisation chief technical advisor Birgitte Poulsen said yesterday.
And acting labour minister Mutale Nalumango said poverty and HIV/AIDS had contributed to the increase in child labour in Zambia.
At the parliamentary workshop on child labour, Poulsen said if nations were to prosper in a globalised world, there was a need for a healthy and educated labour force.
"When children drop out from education to prematurely enter the labour force, in dangerous, lowly paid, low skilled occupations, it is not only a threat to the individual child but also to the development of the entire nation in today's globalised world economy," Poulsen said.
She called on members of parliament to ensure that adequate resources were allocated for the education of all children, including those who had withdrawn from labour.
Poulsen also said there was a need to ensure that teachers and other education staff were well educated and received adequate pay and other incentives to make the learning environment conducive.
Poulsen called for an attack on the root of child labour through the eradication of poverty.
"Poverty produces child labourers, but child labour also produces poverty and this vicious cycle must be broken," Poulsen said.
"By ensuring decent work for adults, parents and guardians are given the means to care for their children, thereby ensuring that they stay in education and not in labour," Poulsen observed.
She urged policy makers to ensure that the National Employment Policy was fully implemented for the benefit of the nation.
And at the same function, acting labour minister Mutale Nalumango said many children were forced to work to supplement their parents' income.
She said child labour was serious as it was inhibiting children from proper physical, emotional and intellectual development.
And Children in Need chairperson Chris Lifasi said it was saddening that employers continued to find it cheaper to employ children.
He said it was worrying that the law was lenient on perpetrators of child labour.
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