Children’s rights groups in Migori County now want the government and the private sector to pool resources and efforts to end child labor and other forms of child abuse in the country.
The groups describe child labor as a catastrophe that has since eroded the country’s human resource basket, leading to lack of dependable, healthy and resilient workforce.
Under the umbrella of the National Child Welfare Association of Kenya (NCWAK), the anti-child labor and other forms of child abuse decried the unwarranted cases of child labor cases being witnessed in Migori and from other areas of the country, calling for their immediate end.
Speaking during a one-day workshop for child rights stakeholders at Awendo Township over the weekend, the experts singled out gold-mining spots within Migori County and elsewhere in Kenya as the worst areas where many teenagers are being abused.
“Much has been talked about child rights abuses in this country, from child beating and child neglect to child prostitution. Besides all this, child labor is another catastrophe that is destroying our human resource basket,” stressed Mr Charles Otieno, the chairman of NCWAK.
“There is no doubt that if we fail to stop children from working in these goldmines, our human resource systems will fail to grow as many of the children would continue to die in large numbers day and night in these minefields.”
According to NCWAK, effects of child labor around and inside the minefields come in numerous ways. The use of mercury will affect the health of the children as it causes diseases that eventually kill the minors.
Accidents, mainly mine pits caving in, might claim the lives of the children just as environmental degradation would.
In Migori County, the number of children working in goldmines was steadily on the rise even as stakeholders put up a desperate fight to end the vice.
From Osiri Matanda gold-field in Nyatike constituency to the sprawled-gold mines near Kehancha town and to the ever-growing gold pits in Kamagambo areas of Rongo Constituency, gold-extraction pits are a free area for children, some as young as 10 years-old, to explore and work in.
Mr. Otieno urged the stakeholders at the forum drawn from civil society, teachers, the Church and the business community that NCWA will continue to defend the rights of children including the unborn ones in order to protect and grow the country’s labour force.
“As a body that is mandated to protect the rights of the minors, we are doing everything possible to promote child safety initiatives that would help curb the many vices currently threatening the survival of the child and especially the girl child,” he said.
In this regard, the group has also been working towards eliminating other forms of child abuses such as female genital mutilation practiced mainly within the Kuria community in Migori County, child murder and molestation.
Although the state has outlawed the practice and pumped huge resources into the campaigns to fight the vice in collaborations with partners from the NGO sector, the practice continues to thrive with impunity within the community.
The rite, organized illegally in the region every year, has always attracted condemnation from the government and none governmental agencies fighting the vice but in vain.
Kuria Professionals have convened numerous anti FGM forums, described the practice as backward, yet no good results have been registered to date.
Each year during the Month of December, the four Kuria clans of the Abanyabasi, Abagumbe, Abakira and Abairege ushers their young children into adulthood by physically cutting part of the reproductive organ in both male and female child.
Mr. Otieno warned of a conspiracy by some parents, guardians and provincial administration to infringe into the rights of the children through retrogressive habits that negatively affected the development of the youngsters.
He said from Kuria, Migori, Nyatike, Rongo, Awendo and Uriri sub-counties, cases of child labour perpetrated in goldmines, within household and in agricultural sector was rife and should be discouraged immediately.
Child murder, molestation, abandoning and infanticide, he added, have become rampant while attributing the trend to lack respect to human life.
“It is time religious leaders, parents, teachers, communities and politicians stood up to protect the children,” he said.
Children should be allowed to lead normal lives and needed security, love, care and a sense of belonging, explained the official, adding that children had a right to education, healthcare and shelter.
By George Agimba
