By IANS
Windhoek (Namibia) : Namibia has announced a national action plan to eradicate child labour in the country, South Africa’s BuaNews agency reported Sunday.
The plan was endorsed at a national conference convened by the Namibian Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare earlier this week.
Over 72,000 Namibian children aged between six years and 18 years worked for pay, profit or family gain. A total of 40,000 working children were younger than 14 years, according to Namibia Child Activity Survey 1999.
Seven percent of the working children had never attended school and another 13 percent are dropouts. Children were used by adults in the commissioning of various crimes, trafficking and for commercial sex.
After final inputs to the plan it would be submitted to the Namibian cabinet for approval.
“Child labour is a manifestation of deep-seated poverty. Therefore its eradication demands support at the highest level and allocation of national resources,” said Judica Amri-Makhetha, Director of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Pretoria.
Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland in Africa had all made significant progress to developing national action plans on child labour, she said.
The conference has pledged to turn the plan into action soon for achieving the ILO deadline of 2015 for eliminating child labour.
South Africa and Namibia are two out of five Southern African countries that entered into an agreement with the ILO to create the technical support structure known as the programme Towards the Elimination of worst forms of Child Labour (TECL).
The other countries are Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. All five have ratified the ILO’s Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where child labour is increasing, according to a global ILO study completed in 2006. The HIV and AIDS pandemic have played a significant role in fuelling child labour.
The conference was organised by TECL and the programme, Reducing Exploitative Child Labour in Southern Africa (RECLISA), partnered with the Namibian ministry of labour and social welfare and was funded by the US Department of Labour.