By Hajaratu Kalokoh
It’s 9pm on a rainy August night; a young boy of about nine years old, drenched by the rain and looking uncomfortably cold, is roaming around Lumely with a plate on his head. He is selling cocoanut slice.
At his age, selling for a living is own normalcy, as strange and hard as it is. And perhaps the most striking irony about his situation was the fact that the total cost of the contents on the plate would not even be enough to pay for his medication, if he falls sick.
This is the story of Saidu (not his real name).
There are hundreds of children like him across Sierra Leone, engaging in street trading and other forms of labor just to survive, despite the existence of a law prohibiting this.
Child labour is one of the most pressing global phenomenon today. According to statistics from the International Labor Organization (ILO), there are 218 million children between the ages 5 and 17 that are employed globally. Some 152 million of these are victims of child labor, it shows.
Africa has the highest proportion of these children - 73 million.
In Sierra Leone, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions reports that 71.6 % of children between the ages of 5 and 14 years are working either in paid or unpaid jobs.
Sadly, Saidu is part of this statistics. At his age, he shouldn’t be. Whiles he is grinding out a living, he is losing his childhood.
There haven’t been enough focus on the issue of child labour in Sierra Leone. This is partly because children face much more complex problems, like teenage pregnancy, child marriage, and child prostitution. But these are all interrelated problems and are all tied to poverty.
Tens of children of Saidu’s age can be spotted around Lumley, which is located in the west end of Freetown, selling all of sorts of things.
Marie (not her real name) has been a hawker since she was 11 years old. She lives in Juba, in the far west of the city.
Now 13, Marie sells what is locally known as ‘fry fry’ - a cocktail of fried potatoes, fish, and cakes, which is usually served with sauce and sometimes as bread sandwich. She sells every day during school holidays and only on weekends when school resumes.
“I normally sell around the area (Juba) and I do not do a lot of hawking. That is the reason why I normally spend two to three hours selling,” she explained.
Even though she sounded as though she was ok with the trading, Marie did not get here by her own volition. She comes from a small middle class family. Things got tough for the family recently after her dad, a contractor, went out of job for the last three months.
Marie was even attending a private school right up to last academic year. And she was supposed to enroll in to a government school this academic year.
Whiles the young girl sells on the streets, her mother, a retailer, sells at home.
By every indication, Marie is not happy to be selling. But surprisingly, at her age, she is matured enough to understand why she is doing it.
“Anytime my mother asks me to go and sell I go willingly. I do not have ill feeling towards trading because I know if my parents can afford, I will not be selling’ she said.
What is the government doing about this situation?
The 2007 Child Rights Act prohibits subjecting children to child labour. Part 8 of No 125 of the Act states: “The age of fifteen shall be the age at which the compulsory primary education of a child shall end, and also the minimum age for the engagement of a child in full - time employment.”
Saidu, Marie and the many children who trade day and night on the streets of Freetown are not even close to that minimum age. They need to be children enjoying their childhood, rather than hawking for their survival.
No 131of the same section of the Act states: “Any person who contravenes the provisions of this part commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding Le10million [current official exchange rate is Le9,260.35 to a US Dollar] or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or to both such fines and imprisonment.”
Clearly, this law and other policies relating to child labour have not been effective enough.
The current administration of President Julius Maada Bio notes as a priority in his campaign manifesto tackling child labour, among many issues facing children.
Bio, in his maiden address to Parliament, reiterated the point, while promising a series of child protection measures that include reviewing and enforcing laws relating to adoption, child trafficking, child labor and juvenile justice.
“Some of the critical child protection issues identified in the New Direction [manifesto] are sexual base violence, teenage pregnancy, early and forced marriage, child trafficking and child labor,” he said, adding: “My administration will implement policy actions and programs to address child trafficking, child labour and juvenile justice.”
Child Labour adversely affects the Free Quality Education initiative that is meant to give children access to education and liberate the vulnerable ones from child labor itself.
Emilia Shaw, a class six teacher at the Regent Square Municipal Primary School, said that part of the causes of poor performance of pupils is child labour.
Regent Square Municipal School is located at Lightfoot Boston Street, about five minute-walk to the Kroo Bay slum area. According to Shaw, most of their pupils are from Kroo Bay.
“Children from this area normally engage in trading and this impact their performance at school,” she said.
The Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs (MSWGCA) is directly responsible to ensure the well-being of children.
Lamrana Koroma, Senior Social Service Officer at the Children’s Directorate in the ministry, said child labour is an alarming issue and that they have been working to tackle.
He told Politico that there investigations over the years have revealed that most children involved in child labour are introduced to it by their own parents or guardians.
“Children are victims of child labor mainly because most times they have these family relatives who stay in Freetown and most times go to the province and take these kids with the notion that they will bring them to the city to attend schools, but in reality that is not what is happening,” he said.
Koroma added that as part of the Ministry’s response, they have returned many of such kids to their families. Where a case involves a child from the rural setting, they work on reuniting them with their original family, he said.
There are no safe homes in Sierra Leone for child labour victims. Few non-governmental organizations operate safe homes, but they are mostly for girls who have been sexually abused.
Defense for Children International Sierra Leone (DCI- SL) is one of many organizations working to protect children against exploitation and other forms of abuses. Its Advocacy and Communication Officer, Issa Bangura, told Politico that they have been working around child trafficking, which they believe is the start of child labor.
Bangura explained that they are using a three-prong approach: working with the children, the community and trying to influence policy.
“Firstly, we directly engage with children about their rights and responsibilities and on the responsibility of the state to protect every other child against all forms of child labor. Therefore, we work with them directly to build their capacity to understand that this is their right and it’s also the responsibility of the state to make sure that they are protected,” he said.
“Secondly, we have been working directly with community leaders including structures like child welfare committee and the village development committee to build their capacity so that they can individually identify, and effectively design practical measures and mechanisms to address issues of child abuse, including child labour,” Bangura added.
On the policy level, the DCI- SL official said they have been lobbying the Social Welfare ministry to design and implement specific policies dealing with this issue.
On that front there are moves now for the Child Rights Act to be reviewed, he said.
But advocacy organisations like DCI-SL can only do so much with engagements and policy drives. Poverty cannot be separated from the roots causes of all of this situation. And at the end of the day, the state must take responsibility for these children.
© 2019 Politico Online
