Children's rights groups in Migori County now want the government and the private sector to pool resources and efforts to end child labor and other forms of child abuse in the country.
The groups describe child labor as a catastrophe that has since eroded the country's human resource basket, leading to lack of dependable, healthy and resilient workforce.
Under the umbrella of the National Child Welfare Association of Kenya (NCWAK), the anti-child labor and other forms of child abuse decried the unwarranted cases of child labor cases being witnessed in Migori and from other areas of the country, calling for their immediate end. Speaking during a one-day workshop for child rights stakeholders at Awendo Township over the weekend, the experts singled out gold-mining spots within Migori County and elsewhere in Kenya as the worst areas where many teenagers are being abused. "Much has been talked about child rights abuses in this country, from child beating and child neglect to child prostitution.
Besides all this, child labor is another catastrophe that is destroying our human resource basket," stressed Mr Charles Otieno, the chairman of NCWAK. "There is no doubt that if we fail to stop children from working in these goldmines, our human resource systems will fail to grow as many of the children would continue to die in large numbers day and night in these minefields." According to NCWAK, effects of child labor around and inside the minefields come in numerous ways.
