By Brenda Nkosi

Thyolo, Mana: Despite tea estates not employing children, which are the biggest employers of Thyolo district, cases of child labour are still high.

District Labour Officers for Thyolo, Ryson Kaduya said this on Friday during a Cream Anti-Child Labour Open Day organized by Teachers Union of Malawi (TUM) at Thunga Primary School Ground.

“The child labour situation in Thyolo is not much different from other districts. It is high and prevalent in most work places. It is both in formal and informal sector, much being in the domestic work.

“Households mostly like to employ young children to do domestic work and sell things for them like flitters (commonly known as mandasi), freezes and other snacks,” said Kaduya.

He said the tea sector does not employ children, however there is still child labour associated to it.

“Parents working or involved in tea production mostly instruct their children to sell snacks or drinks where pluckers are working. Again, apart from leaving them in charge of their younger siblings, they also leave household chores for them at a time they are supposed to be in school because them as parents are working in estates,” said he.

Programmes Coordinator at TUM, Pilirani Kamaliza said their organisation, with support from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) ACCEL project was implementing a one year CREAM programme in five districts of Mulanje, Ntchisi, Mzimba North, Chitipa and Thyolo.

“Our role as TUM is to champion the education component where we are providing education support to children withdrawn from child labour and brought back to school and also children who are already in school but at risk of drop out.

“Examples of these children are those who are combining working and schooling, those from child headed families, teen mothers, those poor households and those at different risks,” said Kamaliza.

He said under this project TUM was working to address three outputs: provision of education support to most vulnerable children in schools, building capacity of teachers on issues of child labour and improving school environment.

During the open day, 170 vulnerable children were given school uniforms, best performing schools were given awards while outstanding learners were given learning materials like back packs, instruments and notebooks,

The post <strong>Thyolo still challenged with child labour issues</strong> appeared first on Malawi Voice.