Child labour- the way forward for our schools?
on Mischa in Cameroon (Cameroon), 04/Feb/2011 15:45, 34 days ago
Children in the rice fields at SirlaweA few days ago I found myself nodding enthusiastically at a meeting as parents and teachers planned to send school children to work for no wages in the rice fields during school hours. The roof of the school has a massive hole in it, but the money raised from school fees won’t cover the repairs. The parents want to invest the money in half a rice field, the children will provide the labour for free, and then they will hopefully have enough money from the profits to fix the roof.This is an exciting example of creative thinking by the parents’ association and is almost certainly inspired by the mothers at the school, who are already raising funds by cultivating rice. There are also benefits to the children working in the fields: the vast majority of them will never carry on to secondary education and will grow up with few alternativesfrom rice farming as a career. Their parents will be reassured that sending their children to primary school will not deny them the chance to learn crucial agricultural skills.In the next village the Mothers’ Association has also purchased a rice field, which they’ll cultivate to make money to help the school. VSO has given them a start-up grant to help pay for fertilisers. They have several ambitious projects, from buying desks to purchasing a grinding mill. At the moment millet (the staple food)has to be ground by hand or taken all the way to Maga (a ten km round trip) to be crushed in a mill there. Young girls are often the ones who have to crush the millet or take it to Maga, meaning they don’t have time to go to school or study in the afternoons.The broken roof at SimatouThey too want to make sure their daughters are involved in working the rice: they plan to reserve a quarter of their field to be worked by the schoolgirls. They’ll then put the money earned into a special fund, which they’ll use on a case-by-case basis to help girls buy books and school materials or pay to do exams.At my exclusive private London secondary school the eleven and twelve year olds were made to raise money for the school development fund by doing a sponsored swim. In some ways, I think this isn’t too different! On the other hand I will object later in the year when classrooms empty as parents take their children out of school to work every day in the fields. The children complain that while their parents take the money they earn as wages they often refuse to buy them pens and notebooksfor school.Also, I have malaria this week, so a couple of local malaria facts:1)   The price of Coartem, the standard malaria drug for adults, has just gone up from 600 CFA (80 pence) to 1500 CFA (two pounds) at Maga hospital. This doesn’t matter for me (I have full medical cover anyway), but it’s very bad news for a parent paid teacher earning 15,000 CFA a month.2)   The government of Cameroon has announced that malaria treatment is free for children from 0-5 years of ages. Good news, one would think. However they have only provided enough free medication to Maga hospital to treatthreechildren. Now the hospital staff are concerned that parents who’ve heard the announcement will bring their children to the hospital for treatment, and then think that the hospital is stealing their money when they ask for payment.