Print
this page
Email
this page Newsletters - Children and Work
Zambia
I was shocked when I recently travelled to my home "town" Petauke. At the bus station, there were a number of children all scrambling to carry my bag. Each one asked for between one and twenty pence regardless of the distance. I offered the job to no one for I did not want to be party to child labour.
As I walked to my village, 8km away, I saw young children weeding in the fields. This was too much for me! In Luanshya, a town where I have just been transferred to, the situation is pathetic. Children do all kinds of chores to earn some food for the family.
In Zambia and the developing world, the above scenario is no different. As in Luanshya, we seem to have come to live with child labour. What has the Church to offer – in particular the Anglican Church? It is important to note that child labour is different from street children who have nowhere to go, as most of the children come from parents who are not able to feed their family or have no alternative but to use child labour to weed the fields. The parents are also unable to provide school fees. (Though the government has scrapped school fees, these are charged in another form. The Parents Teachers Association (PTA) levy the children through sports fees etc.) In the end, many fall out of school and eventually become street children.
St. George’s, where I am, has a programme which has seen a number of children rescued from child labour due to the present economic situation in Zambia and Luanshya in particular (the mines closed about four years ago). They have managed to continue to support four orphans with school requisites. As I am new in this place, I have taken the initiative of meeting the congregational committee and fellow Priests so that we can revive the integration of these children back to their families and educate the parents of the dangers of child labour. It will take some time I know, but to follow the African saying "To finish the carcass of an elephant you need to eat its meat piece by piece.”
Medrine Mwansa is 13 years old, a bright enthusiastic grade 7 pupil at Katuba Primary School in a rural part of Zambia. She says, with a smile, that her ambition is to be a teacher just like Mr Kamonje. Mr Kamonje beams proudly from the front of the class.
Yet Medrine has, statistically, a very slim chance of fulfilling her dream.
Most rural communities in Zambia practise labour-intensive subsistence farming as the main source of food and income. However, even in a year of reasonably reliable weather, most farms barely produce enough to feed the family. Everyone, children included, has to work in the fields to ensure that enough food is grown and this can mean enormous disruption to schooling.
It is hardly surprising that so few children from villages go on to further education and qualifications, whatever their ability. Harvest Help, a UK-based charity founded by Christians and with wide church support, has been working in Zambia for a number of years to tackle the long-term causes of poverty that create the dilemma for Medrine's family. It has a programme of supporting school building and teacher training, but, says the Director "We firmly believe that only when we tackle the underlying problems of poverty in rural Zambia will pupils like Medrine have the opportunities they deserve. We concentrate most of our effort in helping farmers to improve their agricultural production. When farms like Medrine's produce a surplus then there will be spare money to pay for school and a reduced need to rely on everyone's labour just to survive the next few months.”
A more recent emphasis in Harvest Help's work has been small-scale business loans, particularly for women, allowing financial independence and a chance to pay for the education of their children. The chances for Medrine remain slim, but they are improving. It may take another generation, it may be sooner, but children like Medrine need a way out of the poverty trap, a chance to achieve their full potential. With one wage earning teacher in the family, the Mwansas could afford to send more children to school and the poverty cycle would be decisively and permanently broken.
Top
