President Cyril Ramaphosa says there should be no excuse for exploiting children in child labour.
Addressing delegates during the fifth Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, Ramaphosa says the increasing numbers of children being forced into child labour sets back their efforts to eliminate child labour by 2025.
“Such exploitative labour practices are also disallowed as they impact the child’s spiritual, moral, and social development. Such labour practices rob children of a childhood. They deny them the opportunity to explore, learn, develop and fulfill their potential. Child labour perpetuates the cycle of poverty.
According to the ILO more than 160-million children globally are labourers, while over half of them range between the ages of five and eleven.
Government says although there are laws that protect children against child labour and forced labour, members of the public need to increase their efforts of reporting such incidents.
Labour Attaché at the South African Permanent Mission in Switzerland, Siyabonga Hadebe explains.
“It’s not easy to deal with this problem because we rely on members of the public to come forward and report on these issues, but when our labour inspectors do go out out and visit companies and other areas, they do find children but that is only a small number. At the moment it doesn’t even look like many people are aware of the law itself that says children under the age of 15 are not supposed to work those children are supposed to be at school.”
5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour takes place in Durban:
