Children Forced to Work As Poverty, HIV Bite

from All Africa

New Vision (Kampala)

By Maria Wamala
Kampala

EVERY year, on June 16, the Day of the African Child is held, to commemorate the killing of 100 black students in South Africa in a protest against poor education. This year's theme is 'Right to participation: let children be heard and seen'. But, as Maria Wamala writes, the situation of children in Uganda is worrying, with 2.7million subjected to hazardous child labour

It is early in the morning, but 10-year-old Gerald Balyokweyo is already looking tired, pale and hungry. Carrying bundles of carrots and tomatoes in his small hands, he walks from Mengo Kisenyi to Kampala without breakfast.

Leaning against a wall, Balwokweyo narrates his experience: "By 7:00am, my brother, Hamza and I are already in Kampala preparing to sell our vegetables.

We both go to Hosanna Primary School in Mengo, Kisenyi. I am in P.2 and Hamza is in P.4. We wake up before 6:00am. Our mother does not work. She gives each of us sh10,000 to buy vegetables and sell them. We give her part of our money to keep for school fees and use the rest to buy food and clothes.

During the holiday, we work daily and during school time we work over the weekends."

Balyokweyo and his brother are only a fraction of the 2.7 million-strong child labour-force in Uganda, according to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics. They work for long hours to get a little money for their education, food and clothes.

"As I sell tomatoes and carrots, Hamza sells egg plants, onions and green pepper. Each pack costs sh500 but some people pay less, while others give us counterfeit money," Balyokweyo says.

Balyokweyo wishes he had a better life. "We want to go to school but our parents are poor, so we have to work," he says. "I hate what I do because I walk a lot in the sun.

Even when it rains , I have nowhere to take shelter because I don't have a stall," he says. "By the time I go back home, my body is sticky with sweat and dust, my head hurts and I am exhausted and hungry. I only eat kikomando, (chapati and beans) for lunch."

But his problems do not end there. Sometimes the money Balyokweyo makes is stolen. He also recounts the many times Kampala City Council officials chased him, his brother and other vendors off the streets because they do not pay taxes.

"KCC takes our things and until we pay, we cannot get them back," Balyokweyo says in a frail voice. "One time I fell in a ditch and hurt myself as I was running away from them."

Harriet Luyima, the manager of the Child Labour Unit at the Ministry of Gender Labour and Social Development explains that many children work in quarries, commercial sex, plantations, fishing and domestic work.

At Muyenga quarry, about 100 children between five and 17 years crush stones to get money for school fees and clothes. "These children handle dangerous tools and hurt themselves as they work.

Small pieces of stone get into their eyes and they get injuries they are unable to treat and the heavy weights they carry make them stunted," Luyima says.

"We spend two weeks crushing a wheelbarrow- full of stones which sells at Sh2,000.

But some customers bargain and we give them at a lower price," says 11-year-old Mugerwa.

Luyima says with 35% of the population living in absolute poverty, parents are compelled to send their children to work because they cannot provide for them.

"However, some parents are irresponsible. They get drunk and forget the children or even batter them, forcing them to take to the streets and find work," Luyima says.

The secretary general of the National Council for Children, Joyce Otim-Nape, says working children are exploited by older people who should protect them instead.

The situation is compounded by the loss of parents to HIV/AIDS. Luyima says most working children have lost either one or both parents and that there are two million HIV/AIDS orphans in the country.

"As children are left alone, child-headed homes come up, forcing children to work to feed their siblings," Luyima notes. "When parents fall sick the children are pulled out of school to look after them.Eventually they drop out of school and resort to working."

A number of orphans are looked after by grand parents who, when they get over-burdened, send them to work. Ten-year-old Nulu Namuleme is one such example. "I sell sweet bananas. After work, I go home and give the money to jajja to keep for my school fees," she says.

In an effort to solve this problem, the gender ministry and the International Labour Organisation are working on an HIV/AIDS-Induced-Child-Labour policy that provides for withdrawal and rehabilitation of children who are forced into labour.