My name is Mohmed Kuteh and I am a student of the Sierra Leone Grammar School ...
I would definitely like to share my story and idea about the topic child labour.
The child labour refers to the punishment most of the children are suffering from nowadays. It has a significant effect on the child from childhood to adulthood. This is rather a difficult situation.
Countless children around the world and particularly in this Africa continent have been greatly disturbed by this child labour. Most children today in Sierra Leone are left to work and labour for the benefit of some greedy people. They are not school-going children, and they tend to play adult roles in the community. Most of the girls act as mothers by taking care of their younger ones, cleaning house-hold utensils, cooking at home, fetching water and fire-wood from about four or five miles away from home. These children use their bare hands to launder lots of clothes for elders. Many others are petty traders, staying all day long in the streets to trade in small commodities for the livelihood of a whole family. Therefore, most children are not able to bear up to this situation and end up to become frustrated about their plight.
They begin to roam about the streets selling themselves as prostitutes for money. They have not been able to go to school and learn something, and now need basic necessity.
Infact, they turn out to provide most of the basic necessities of the family, by working on farms, using private tools like cutlasses and hoes etc. doing such manual labour. This is common amongst the boy-child. In addition some of them take part in manual labour like producing timber felling big trees while whilst others are sent as early hunters. They also fetch wood for cooking at home. Some of them are used as means of transportation by carrying loads from one place to another to earn their living. Others act as apprentices or driver's assistance in public vehicles and so do not go to school, but introduced early to money finding, roaming up and down the city.
I think there must be a solution to this great problem of child labour throughout the world. My own suggestion is that the family heads must provide love, care and security for children. They should also ensure that their growing children be educated, because the word education is a weapon of liberation from ignorance, poverty and disease which is part of the social aspect of every child.
The children must be prepared to accept responsibilities so that the growing child will not face suffering when he or she grows up. Basic necessities like food, good shelter must be provided for the child.
Finally, I think that the provision of the above measures and many more will surely help to eradicate the world of child labour. I will stop here so far for now till I hear from Sarah and other students.
Mohamed Kuteh