As Rwanda joins the world to celebrate the International Labour Day today, government and private sector say child labour has reduced significantly and is on the verge of being eliminated. “Rwanda was a hotbed of child labour mainly as a result of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi that left orphans and poverty and other economic challenges. But child labour has since reduced significantly thanks to different programmes aimed at reducing poverty,” said Anna Mugabo, Director General of Labour and Employment in the Ministry of Public Service and Labour.Some of these projects also include increasing access to education through 12-year basic education which, in turn, increased school enrolment that outweighed the engagement of children in economic activities.“Parents lacked finances to pay school fees and this resulted into child labour instead of education. But the increasing access to education reduced child labour,’’ Mugabo told The New Times yesterday.The director of advocacy and labour relations at the Private Sector Federation (PSF) Antoine Manzi, echoed Mugabo’s statement, saying the current rate is very low with a few cases still found in mining, construction and tea factories.“We are going to scale up sensitisation among companies employing children so that they can stop it,” he said, adding that the government continues to devise mechanisms aimed at the total elimination of child labour in five years.According to the Rwanda National Child Labour Survey (2008), the factors leading to child labour are poverty, awareness and limited information on child labour, exposure or opportunity to economic activities, and low education status of parents.The Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE- Rwanda), one of the activists for elimination of child labour, said the parents’ limited knowledge on child labour and mentality perpetuate the vice.“Child labour exists in Rwanda, its elimination may not be immediate but it is possible,’’ FAWE - Rwanda coordinator Eugenie Mukanoheri said.
