Kampala — Uganda's cash crops could attract sanctions or boycotts from the World Trade Organisation (WTO) if employers continue using child labour.

"At an international level, child labour could have serious consequences to employers including sanctions or boycotts of products. This has happened in some countries," Aloysius Ssemanda, the chairman of the Federation of Uganda Employers (FUE), said on Tuesday during a workshop at Hotel Africana in Kampala.

Sources said the WTO would pass new laws barring countries that still use child labour from international trade.

According to recent child labour reports from the International Labour Organisation, Uganda has about 2.7 million working children, with 28% working on employer's premises and 18% on plantations.

Ssemanda, who was represented by Isaac Munabi, FUE's industrial relations committee chairman, said Uganda's employers are obliged to contribute towards elimination of the worst forms of child labour because Uganda ratified the ILO Convention on Child Labour.

The workshop was aimed at exposing FUE's council members and staff to the effects of child labour in commercial agriculture, especially in coffee production.

Swizen Kyomuhendo, a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Makerere University, said 54% of child workers in the coffee sector are between 10 and 14 years.

Kyomuhendo said more than 75% of employers in the sector have no arrangements to eliminate child labour.