Child labour, with attendant abuses, has hit catastrophic levels in Kenya and unless the government intervenes, the country faces the risk of destroying the pool of skilled manpower it needs for accelerated economic and social development, children rights groups in Migori County warn.

Speaking during a one-day workshop for child rights stakeholders at Awendo Township at the weekend, the experts singled out gold-mining spots in Migori County and elsewhere in Kenya as the worst areas where many teenagers are being abused.

The groups want the national and county governments, and the private sector to pool resources to eliminate child labour and other forms of child abuses in the country.

The groups describe child labour as a catastrophe that has since eroded the country’s human resource pool and precipitated depletion of skilled, dependable, healthy and resilient workforce.

Under the umbrella of the National Child Welfare Association of Kenya (NCWAK), the anti-child labour and other forms of child abuse decried surge in child labour in Migori and from other areas of the Country, calling for their immediate end.

“Much has been talked about child rights abuses in this country, from child beating, child neglect to child prostitution. Besides all this, child labour is another catastrophe that is destroying our human resource pool,” observed NCWAK Chair Charles Otieno.

“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-labour 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 fighting to end the vice.

From Osiri Matanda goldfields in Nyatike constituency to the sprawling goldmines in Kehancha 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.

Otieno urged the stakeholders at the forum drawn from the civil society, teachers, the Church and the business community that NCWA will continue to defend the rights of children including the unborn ones 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 practised 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, done clandestinely as the law forbids it, 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 positive results have been registered to date.

Each year during the Month of December, the four Kuria clans of the Abanyabasi, Abagumbe, Abakira and Abairege usher their young children into adulthood by physically cutting part of the reproductive organ of both male and female child.

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 affect the development of the youth.

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, abandonment and infanticide, he added, have become rampant and attributes 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.

• A Tell Media / KNA report / By George Agimba