Rwandan children could be set to lose out when the World Vision’s programme, KURET (Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia Together) project, stops its funding for Rwanda programmes designed to protect children from the worst forms of child labour.

Amidst revelations that the Government of Rwanda has successfully incorporated into its labour and social welfare programmes, campaigns against child labour.

The Rwanda Project Manager, Julian Ntezimana recently confirmed the development.

Talking to The New Times, shortly after their final evaluation meeting which took place at Hotel Novotel, Ntezimana said that they are scaling down their activities until they finally pull out next year in March when the project ends.

The Rwanda KURET programme is mainly funded by the US department of Labour while the World Vision is the lead agency among three Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) that have been implementing the programme in the four countries.

The project has been engaged in removing and preventing children from being subjected to child labour in ten districts of the country since September 2004.

According to Ntezimana, since its inception, KURET, has managed to rescue a total of 7,372 children from worst forms of child labour managing to enrol them in schools.

She added that some completed technical vocational skills training programmes and were given start-up kits while others are still studying in several mainstream primary, secondary and catch-up schools. 

Catch-up schools are where children who had formerly dropped out of school are enrolled to study three years of primary education and they sit Primary Leaving Examinations.

"We are scaling down in terms of activities and personnel until we finally stop on March 31, 2009,” Ntezimana said.

"We are glad the Ministry of labour and the Districts we have been working in have incorporated the programme of combating child labour in their work plans. We managed to highlight the problem and the government has adopted it,” Ntezimana said, responding to a question of the fate of children who may still be subjected to the unfair labour.

The most common forms of child labour in which the children were engaged include animal rearing, sugar cane cutting, domestic servitude, stone quarrying, working on tea plantations and brick making.

"Parents have to understand that child labour is detrimental to the child’s normal growth and it affects the country’s future labour force. Parents should be supportive of their children by educating them instead of subjecting them to hard labour,” Ntezimana said.

She explained that poverty should not be an excuse to deny children their right to education, saying it’s a parent’s primary responsibility to guarantee quality education for their children.

"Now that the parents were educated on the dangers of child labour and are able to distinguish it from acceptable work for children, parents should do their best to rid our society of exploitative labour,” Ntezimana underscored.

Noting that with political will, everything is possible, Ntezimana said they managed to achieve their targeted goals surpassing them in other areas.

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