Eliminating Child Labour in mining communities: a collective responsibility

He is one of the thousands of children in Ghana who had to face life the hard way.

 One of the child labours carrying a load at the mining site

His parents divorced when he was at a tender age, leaving him to bear the brunts of a broken home.

While other children were provided basic necessities of life such as food, shelter, clothing and education, he had to take his destiny into his own hands.

That was what swayed 26-year-old Mathew Ennin into illegal mining, popularly called "galamsey.”

He was a mere lad of 10, but had to break his back to live.

And ever since he trekked that path 16 years ago, there has been no turning back.

After 12 years of jostling between galamsey sites and the classroom, he finally kissed his secondary education goodbye in 2016.

I met him at one of the “ghettos” at an artisanal mining site at Adomanu in the Adansi-North District in the Ashanti Region on February 14, this year.

He had just come out of one of the deep pits in the mining enclave after several hours of striking out gold-bearing ore from underground.

He wore tattered clothes with a pair of torn gloves and a shirt wrapped round his head.

The look on his face showed clearly that he was stressed out. He told nerve-wrecking tales of his expeditions in the galamsey world.

"When my parents separated, things were very difficult for me.

I had to fend for myself, so I had no option but to do galamsey. As we speak now, I don't even want to hear about school at all," he said.

The law

The Minerals and Mining Act, 2006 (Act 703); the Minerals and Mining (Amendment Act, 2015 (Act 900) as well as the Minerals and Mining Regulations, 2012 (L.I 2182) prohibits child labour in the mining sector.

Regulation 507 (1) of L.I 2182 states that, “a person shall not be employed in a mine, unless that person is at least 18 years old.” It goes on to say in 507 (2) that “a person shall not work in an underground mine unless that person is at least 21 years old.

Similarly, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) frowns on Hazardous Child Labour, defined by Article 3(d) of ILO Convention concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour, 1999 (No. 182) as: “work which by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children.”

Sad picture

In spite of these provisions, galamsey which has dealt a heavy blow to the country’s land and water resources, has consumed many children.

In 2016, the ILO estimated that globally, 152 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 were in child labour with about 73 million in hazardous child labour.

It added that 71 per cent of the child labour was in agriculture – fishing, forestry, livestock, herding and aquaculture; 17 per cent in services; and 12 per cent in the industrial sector, including mining.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) also estimates that of all children in Ghana aged 5 to 17 years, about 21 per cent are involved in child labour and 14 per cent are engaged in hazardous forms of labour.

It also estimated that thousands of children are caught up in child labour through galamsey in Ghana in gross violation of local and international laws.

In my interaction with some of the young men at the artisanal mining site, it came to light that their ages ranged between 18 and 22 but they had been in the galamsey business for over 10 years.

The hazardous nature of the work they engage in along the chain of activities put them at serious health risk, especially so when they work without personal protective equipment (PPEs).

Fourteen-year-old Isaac Addai, a first year pupil of WAI Adu Asare Basic School at Abedwum in the Adansi North District, narrated how galamsey had put a toll on his health and education.

“I carried ore from the galamsey pits to a collection point which is about 100 metres away.

From morning till evening, I could go 100 times a day for a fee of 10 pesewas per trip.

"When I was active in the galamsey business, I suffered severe headaches, I couldn’t breathe properly, my body ached badly; and I stayed out of school most of the days. On the days I went to school, I could not concentrate in class because I always slept," he said.

Such is the case with 15-year-old Leticia Honzey, a second year pupil of the same school, who bore the brunts of galamsey to support her poor mother and keep herself in school.

ILO intervention

It took the intervention of ILO’s Caring Gold Mining Project (CGMP) that was implemented in the Abedwum and Adomanu communities in 2017 to save the pair and hundreds others from the jaws of galamsey. 

The CGMP mobilised chiefs, parents, teachers and other opinion leaders to work with the Minerals Commission and the Ghana National Association of Small Scale Miners (GNASSM) in a sensitisation campaign towards eliminating child labour in those communities.

A Community Child Protection Committee (CCPC) was set up with one of its primary objective as ensuring that all children are rescued from mining sites into the classroom.

The project saw the Adansi-North District Assembly tighten the knot on its by-laws to make it biting enough to deter parents from allowing their children to engage in galamsey.

After over three years of implementation, the Planning Officer of the Adansi North District Assembly, Mr Emmanuel Amoakohene, said the project made significant impact in the area.

"Abedwum and Adomanu communities where the CGMP was piloted are now free from child labour.

We have gone a step further to replicate the same module in nine of our 33 communities.

We have declared Adansi North District as Child Labour Free Zone (CLFZ) and we are working hard to eliminate the menace in the coming years," he said.

Meanwhile, the head teacher of WAI Adu Asare Basic School, Mrs Aramatu Alhasaan, said the CGMP had brought many of the children back to the classroom.

“Before the ILO project was introduced in 2017, child labour had reached a crisis situation in this area with more than half of the pupils of this school having a field day at galamsey sites at the expense of their education.

"The population of the whole school was 104 pupils but thanks to the ILO project, we now have 218 pupils,” she said.

Conclusion

The United Nations (UN) sustainable development goal (SDG) 8.7 requires countries to “take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour; end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025, end child labour in all its forms.”

In fulfilment of this, the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution on July 25, 2019, declaring 2021 as the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour.

It is obvious that poverty; weak enforcement of laws; and the informal nature of artisanal small-scale mining; are major fuelling factors for child labour.

The impact of the ILO’s CGMP is a clear demonstration that effective collaboration between state and non-state actors; strict enforcement of laws and provision of sustainable livelihoods are key if Ghana is to eliminate child labour.

Writer’s e-mail: ngnenbetimothy@gmail.com