South Africa has made great progress in the battle to deal with the worst forms of child labour. So says the Minster of Labour, Mrs Mildred Oliphant who told the global conference on child labour that as part of the measures of dealing with this scourge, specific legislation has been enacted that seeks to give children a better fighting chance in future.
During the last conference in 2010 at the Hague, countries made specific commitments around legislative amendments, education, social protection and labour market policies towards the eradication of this scourge.
“These commitments required the development of an arsenal of legislation to provide protection for children in a holistic manner and since the last conference, as South Africa, we have finalised a number of legislative and policy initiatives to bolster our arsenal: Our Trafficking in Persons (TIP) legislation was enacted this year.
The Child Justice Act that came into force soon after the 2010 conference not only seeks to increase access to justice but also provides innovative ways in dealing with children that have been involved either in Children used by Adults to Commit Crime (CUBAC) and Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC),” she said.
Whilst the child labour problem in South Africa is not as pronounced as in other developing nations, the country has committed itself under the mantra that “A sustainable attack on child labour should and must focus on the underlying causes for child labour”.
One of these is education which was identified in the roadmap as critical to fighting the scourge. “We have as a country in effect achieved the Millennium Development Goal of universal access to primary education before the year 2015. We however, acknowledge some challenges which require us to look at innovative interventions to improve the quality and functionality of education.
“Like many other countries, South Africa’s unemployment problem affects youth adversely. Our vocational training system includes country-wide Further Education and Training (FET) colleges, as well as systems of learnerships, apprenticeships and internships which are intended to provide practical training and experience alongside more theoretical learning.
South Africa is also considering the implementation of a youth wage subsidy to encourage employers to take on first-time labour market entrants,” she said. She added that the major victory was not that the Child Labour Programme of Action embarked on new and ground breaking work, although some of the work we did can certainly be called ground breaking.
The success of the CLPA lies in how it focuses the attention of existing programmes of government on the issues of child labour. It is how these activities are mainstreamed with a specific child labour focus that we hope will contribute to its success.
