Vusumuzi Dube
Fortunate Muzarabani, Sunday News Correspondent
When a group of boys arrives pushing a seemingly heavy scotch cart with metal debris that includes a car wreckage and what looks like parts of heavy machinery, Mr Luckson Chizhande, a scrap metal buyer knows that he would be a few dollars poorer as the young lads would try to get the best bargain out of an entire weekend’s work.
He often gives them something a little extra, and on a good weekend, also pays them to clean his car as well, something they really love as they get to experience the interior of a Toyota Fortuner, a car they seldom see in the dusty streets of Bulawayo’s Mpopoma suburb where they come from.
The boys survive mostly on selling scrap, while they also maximize on urban agriculture and work in people’s fields along Nketa Drive.
“I love that these boys do not steal from anyone but they get to work for their money. In an ideal world, they should be playing after school and doing what the normal child will do but this is a tough situation and in as much as I cannot adopt them, I at least pay them more than is due for their efforts, and always ask them about their school work to try and encourage them to stay in school,” says Mr Chizhande.
They are from two struggling families in Mpopoma, one is headed by a sickly grandmother while the other is headed by an older sister (16) who spends the day selling at a vending stall near Mathonisa beer garden.
The families migrated from Dete area in Hwange to Bulawayo following perennial droughts and a failed rain fed subsistence farming lifestyle. In both families, the parents moved to South Africa but have not yet managed to strike good fortune, leading to the life of struggle of the young children who have had to take up manly duties.
Their situations reflect the lives of many other children in the region who have been forced into child labour due to climate change related migration as families seek better fortunes when rain fed agriculture seems to fail.
Speaking to Sunday News last week on the increasing number of children joining the SMEs sector. Small to Medium Enterprises minister Sithembiso Nyoni said her ministry was concerned about the numbers of children represented in various SMEs and said special committees within government were looking into such issues.
“This is a concern for the ministry of SMEs. We really do not encourage the participation of children in business, especially at a time when they should be at school. However, the responsibilities should go to the right ministries. The ministry of education should see that children are going to school. The ministry of social welfare is doing its best to make sure that children are not in the streets and also that child labour is not allowed. The ministry of health also takes care of such children. We have a committee that the Vice President (Cde Chiwenga) chairs and these are some of the issues that we look at,” said the minister.
The minister also called for the reviving of extended families and urged communities and relatives to help with the welfare of orphaned or vulnerable children, saying that government had the overall role but that localized family and community systems had proven to be more practical and more useful in child care.
“But I want to challenge the parents, you cannot push this to government alone. As parents, let us ensure that our children go to school. Government can do so much, but really, parents play the leading role. In Nkayi we have launched an operation, “bazali asibambeni abantwabethu’. I also refer the responsibility back to the family, and then the community and then the government overall. But government cannot override the family, and then the community and override the parents and claim that it will succeed. But it can support these systems to make sure that these systems succeed. It all begins with us in our families and in us as children,” said Minister Nyoni.
Deputy Director for International Relations in the Ministry of Public Service Tariro Jongwe, while addressing the National Employment Council Symposium in Victoria Falls recently, highlighted that the tobacco sector was targeted by Government and international partners due to the prevalence of child labour.
“Multiple studies show that child labour exists in Zimbabwe mainly in the agricultural tobacco sector and a memorandum of understanding has been signed with an organisation called Elimination of Child Labour in Tobacco Farming. The other initiative that, as Government, we intend to do, is to come up with what we call a National Standing Committee on child labour and this should be in place by end of October. This will comprise all stakeholders including Government, non-governmental organisations, civil society organisations, National Employment Councils and others involved in child protection. The intention is to develop a National Action Plan on child labour,” said Jongwe.
Child labour surveys carried out by the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare in conjunction with ZimStat, showed that child labour was prevalent on some tobacco farms where children younger than 18 years are reportedly engaged in exploitative work where they also earn meagre wages.
While child labour often stems from poverty in communities, the International Labour Organisation posits that the abolition of child labour in developing economies could generate economic benefits much greater than the costs, which are mostly associated with an investment in better schooling and social services.
The first United Nations (UN) Convention on the rights of the child was adopted in 1919, over 70 years ago. It fixed a minimum age of 14 for admission into employment in industry. This UN limit has since been revised upwards to 18 years, but in Zimbabwe today, as in many underdeveloped countries, there are still many children below the 1919 limit of 14 years in formal and informal employment Children work in tiring, hazardous jobs for little or no pay, and their participation in the workforce is not formally recognised, either in planning or in law.
Government is a signatory to international Conventions 138 and 182 promulgated under the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to address the minimum age for a person to be employed and worse forms of child labour respectively. Ends
The story is published with support from the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbawe (VMCZ) and the Embassy of Canada in Zimbabwe under the Investigative Journalism Fund Program.
Online Reporter