-As children between ages 5-16 has become bread winners for families
By Emmanuel Mafelah,mafelahemmanuel29@gmail.com
Gbarnga, Liberia-Child labor is said to be on the increase in Gbarnga and its surroundings in Liberia’s central, Bong County, where hundreds of children between the ages 5-16 have become bread winners for their families.
Article 3 of the United Nations Convention against child labour says:
“The minimum age for admission to any type of employment or work which by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out is likely to jeopardise the health, safety or morals of young persons shall not be less than 18 years.”
Children are found in every part of the Bong capital city, Gbarnga, either engaged in farm work, selling in market places or on the streets. They trade goods ranging from plastic bags, cold water, drinks, potato greens, cassava leafs, fish and chickens among other things.
Some of these kids say thy are in school, but many others are not in school.
In conversation with this Reporter on Saturday 3 August 2019 in Gbarnga, Marie Kolleh, age 9 of the Plum Valley community who sells cold water in the Gbarnga central market said, her father died during the deadly Ebola virus outbreak and she is selling in order to have food to eat with her poor siblings.
Little Kolleh said her mother is an old woman who cannot do much to earn the needed income to feed them saying, “I help her to sell the cold water every day.”
“At times I get very frustrated when I go to sell on school campuses and see my friends dressed in their uniforms and I’m selling to them cold water,” Little Kolleh adds. “I know that one day I will be in school like them because my mother promised to send me to school when I make plenty money for school fees,” Kolleh stated.
Marie Kolleh’s mother Hannah Kolleh as saying since the death of her husband, things have been very difficult and her daughter is the only person that normally helps her find food and school fees while she still home to prepare every day.
Madam Kolleh said the reason her daughter is not in school is due to the lack of financial support and as such what little Marie Kolleh sells a day is used for food as well as solving other problems in the home and sometimes makes 200-350 Liberian dollars every day.
Hannah Kolleh further said “I’m not happy to send my only daughter to sell, but it’s because I’m old and there is no means of me going anywhere. I used to go on the farm but since my husband died from me I and no longer able to do anything.
Madam Kolleh said she hope that one day her daughter will go to school maintaining that for now she will continue to sell until her she can reaches the exact amount for her school fees, because according to her, she doesn’t want to send her to school now and later take her out due lack of school fees.
Neona Jackson, age 11 from the Lelekpayea community is another young breadwinner. He said his father abandoned her in during her pregnancy on the mother and has been selling for the last five years and has been to school on several occasion to cannot complete the school due to lack of money.
“I see others going to school and I want to be like them but there is no means because my mother is alone, a farmer making cassava farm, greens and pepper farm and I am the only one to sell in the market,’ she said.
Jackson stated: “I cannot disobey my mother by refusing to sell because I am the only person she have as her best friend in life so I need to do what so ever she want me to do. So there is a serious need for national government come to our aid to help us instead of selling from one community to another,”.
Some parents spoke to this news outlet in tears, saying that they want the government of President Dr. George Manneh Weah to provide the necessary support to Liberian across the country, because they are the future leaders of the Liberia.
The children also said in order for parents to stop sending their children in market places to sell the Liberian government must create a program that will enable children to go to school, instead of making them afraid by saying they they will arrest parents and put them in jail if they refused to send their children to school.
Some parents of the children selling in the streets have termed Bong County as one of the “most difficult places to live” in terms of finding food, sending children to school and paying rents for poor farmers.