When will the menace of child labor stop? Yet we keep on saying that, a child is a gift from God, his/her rights must be respected by each and every individual?
Child labor…child labor…is all over, children are being employed as house helps each and every moment, they are doing tiresome work that their ages do not allow them….so tedious is the work, and it reminds me of a boy called Mike who was 10 years old by then, when his parents passed on.
The journey of education became a dream, as there was no one to cater for his basic needs. This prompted him to stop schooling and look for ways of survival. He got employed by a certain rich man in the nearby village, as a house help. His day always started in the wee hours of the morning before the cock would crow and sleep in the late hours of the evening when each and every flying bird was dead asleep.
Mike’s employer never bothered to look at the health hazards he was exposing Mike to, he could sleep for only two hours on a daily basis. His employer never bothered to take him to hospital whenever he fell ill, this made his health deteriorate with time, he had no place to go to, and no one to turn to as he was never allowed to step out of the compound.
If you were Mike, what would you do? The day he managed to get an escape route, he ran away to the police station and reported the case. When he realized they were unwilling to follow up the case, he took off to the streets to avoid the repercussions, just in case his employer got to know of it.
Where is justice? Who is above law? It is a high time government conducted civic education to educate the masses on what child labor is, and with this, the culprits will never find an escape route from the law, not even walk Scot free when charged.
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