The Education Ministry has taken the initiative to ensure that parents are aware of some of the factors which can bring about the poverty in an effort to prevent future generations from being victims of this scourge
Chief School Welfare Officer Carol Melville said the Education Ministry has recognised the damaging effect the lack of knowledge has on poverty reduction efforts. Outlining some of the factors which cause poverty, Melville said: “Sibling-run homes, truancy, young parenthood, some parents not taking education serious and poverty itself are some of the factors which have contributed towards poverty.”
To this end, parents are being provided with the skills to make them effective in poverty reduction efforts.
This is being done through the International Labour Organisation (ILO) funded Tackling Child Labour Through Education Project. “We want parents to understand that all children need the benefit of a full primary and secondary education, and it is also in keeping with the Millennium Development Goal is,” Melville said. The first of such workshops was held at St Aloysius Primary School in New Amsterdam.
Tackling Child Labour Through Education’s project officer Sharron Patterson said that child labour is not the only focus. She explained that other phenomena which can precipitate child labour. Naming a few others, she cited poverty, truancy, absenteeism, and school dropouts. ”We work in tandem with the ministry to ensure that those activities which can evolve into child labour are reduced or alleviated.”
The Tackling Child Labour Through Education Project is a joint effort of the ILO and the government of Guyana.
Similar workshops are being planned for other groups in Region Six during the school holidays. According to Melville, the programme will move to other regions soon.
Meanwhile, there has been a number of sanitisation and public awareness programmes on the issue of child labour in Regions Two, Three, Four, Eight, Nine, and 10.
Explaining some of the successes of that programme, the chief school welfare officer noted that some young parents have returned to school and successfully sat CXC.
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