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Kenya: Children Hooked to Miraa
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The East African Standard (Nairobi)
15 September 2007
Posted to the web 15 September 2007
Lawrence Kinoti
Nairobi
Eleven-year-old Joshua Mwithia wobbles and almost trips as he heaves under a heavy load on his back. This is his fifth trip to Mutuati shopping centre, one of the drop-off points of miraa (khat) in Meru North.
Nathan Karithi, a Standard Four pupil at Nkamathi primary school speaks on his cell phone which he bought using earnings from miraa.
Mwathi is tired and emaciated but he has to toil on because he has a family to feed. His 14-hour daily job involves harvesting and ferrying miraa from various farms.
Mwithia's plight evokes strong sympathy. His emaciated frame and haggard look bespeak volumes about the high levels of child labour in Meru North District. Mwathi and thousands of other children are not only victims of child labour but are also hooked to the addictive herb.
Orphaned by HIV/Aids at a tender age, these children have been forced to fend for themselves and their surviving family members.
If the children are not employed to pluck, sort out into various grades, package or carry miraa to the markets, they are engaged in more tedious and labour intensive coffee, tea and horticultural farms.
The place of work depends on where one comes from. Those from Igembe District are mainly engaged in miraa farming and business while those from Tigania toil in coffee and tea farms.
Mwithia and his colleagues are part of the estimated 250 million child labourers, worldwide, deprived of education, good health and basic freedoms.
Amos Mwiti supervises other truants of Nkamathi Primary School to pluck miraa twigs for pay at the local village.
In Kenya, according to a report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), close to two million children are working in hazardous conditions. They are deprived of a worthwhile childhood and access to quality education. Most of these children head households because their parents are dead or are too weak because of their HIV/Aids status. Poverty is also another reason these minors find themselves thrown into the harsh realities of the labour market.
Eastern Province is ranked third among the regions with highest number of child labourers.
It is hard for children to remain in school amid the lure of lucrative miraa business.
Peter Kobia M'Nkubitu, a pupil at Karama Antuamuo Primary School, is torn between staying in school and dropping out. He says ever since his three friends dropped out of school in 2004, they are now "successful businessmen". They have been trying to entice him off school with petty gifts but his strict parents have restrained him.
"My friends say I am wasting my time in school while I could be making money. They brag about the money they make and sometimes I envy their lifestyles," he says.
Girls become objects of pleasure for tycoons
Here, the plight of the girl child is even worse. With lots of money circulating at the local Maua town, young girls are easily enticed into early sex. This leads to unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. The girls are prone to mistreatment and manipulation and often end up as objects of pleasure for "local tycoons". Some of them are forced to become house helps, lodging cleaners or bar attendants.
Authorities have been blamed for reluctance to institute strict regulations to ensure that vulnerable underage girls are kept off the town's streets and bars.
Mr Ezekiel Omwanza, the District Children Officer, says many children are trapped in child labour for reasons beyond their control.
Besides the lure of money, they have been forced to take up breadwinning roles after the death of one or both parents.
Meru North has the highest number of orphans in Eastern Province. It has more than 20,000 orphans and majority of them have dropped from school .
The Children Act 2001 states: "Every child shall be protected from economic exploitation and any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development."
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The Act, Omwanza says, has greatly helped in compelling locals to keep their children in school. He, however, regrets that truancy is the order of the day as many children often sneak out of school to go and work in farms.
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