CLOSE to 200 children from various secondary schools in Georgetown on Monday rallied around the global call to end child labour by spreading awareness about it.
The event, held to mark World Day Against Child Labour, was coordinated by the Ministry of Social Protection’s Department of Labour in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, and had as its theme, ‘In difficult circumstances protect children from child labour’.
The rally kicked off from the Public Buildings and headed east along Brickdam to the Independence Park, also known as D’Urban Park, where the children were addressed by Minister of Labour, Mr Keith Scott and Senior Schools Welfare Officer within the Ministry of Education, Ms Onika Pearson.
Participants were drawn from:St. Winefreids, Carmel, Sophia Special, Dolphin, Lodge and Queenstown, all Georgetown based secondary schools.

Minister Scott started off his presentation by urging the students assembled before him to be vigilant and wise in their interactions via social media.
He told them that while the government fully understands the importance of Information Technology as a driver of information and change, and a method of transformation in the development of a nation, it is also well aware of the challenges it can pose to some schoolchildren.
“One of the best ways of modern communication is for you to talk to your friends on the phone or Whatsapp,” he said. “Therefore, we have taken that into consideration, and we are using that as a means of educating you; to make sure that your teachers and the society reaches out to you.
“You therefore have no excuse but to make sure that you learn and learn and learn.”
He also encouraged students to be mindful of sexual predators who are on a mission to lure youths into sexual exploitation and other forms of child labour, and to be smart in choosing whom they interact with.
“That being the case, it is for you to make your best use of IT, and to prepare yourselves to take your rightful places in the world of work later,” the minister said, adding:
“I want to encourage you, therefore, to be very careful with how you interact with the social media, and how you allow it to influence you.
“Be vigilant! It is used to lure young people into child pornography and also into Trafficking in Persons, drugs and alcohol abuse.
“You must know that anything that can be used for good, can also be used for bad. But once you are opaque, once you listen to your teachers, once you understand how to discern between good and bad, you will be able to take care of yourselves.”
According to Ms Pearson, Child Labour is a societal scourge which steals away from children the opportunity of acquiring a sound education and their potential of being success stories.
She said that while child labour involves work which is harmful to children and deprives them of attending school, not all work done by children is child labour.

“Children or adolescents’ participation in work that does not affect their health and personal development or interfere with their schooling, such as helping their parents around the home,” she explained, “is generally regarded as being something positive, which can contribute to children’s development and the welfare of their families.
“Moreover, such work provide(s) them with skills and experience, and help to prepare them to be productive members of society during their adult life.”
Quoting the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Pearson said: “Child labour is often defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.”
Such work, she said, are those which are “mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; interferes with their schooling by depriving them of that opportunity; obliging them to leave school prematurely; and requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.”
Extreme cases of child labour, she said, include the acts of children being enslaved, separated from their families, and exposed to serious hazards and illnesses and/or left to fend for themselves, and the ILO said millions of children worldwide, between the ages of five and 17, work under conditions considered illegal, hazardous, or extremely exploitative.