The Federal Government has said that the menace of child labour and abuse in the country would not be eliminated without the active contribution of the media.
Yerima Tarfa, permanent secretary, Ministry of Labour and Employment, who made this known, Thursday while declaring open a one-day workshop on ‘Reportage of Elimination of Child Labour,’ disclosed that Nigeria was working on achieving a significant milestone in the elimination of child labour practices.
Tarfa described child labour and other forms of modern-day slavery as issues of grave concern in the global arena on account of their dire consequences, and the persistence of those consequences through generations of families.
He stressed that the role of journalists and the mass media in the campaign to end child labour was central in the strategy and the policies of elimination of child labour.
“This workshop has become necessary because of the need to create awareness and mobilize the critical public in the fight against child labour.”
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Olaolu Olaitan, the ministry’s deputy director, inspectorate division, in her paper presentation defined child labour as a form of exploitative work or forced labour children are subjected to the detriment of their health and normal growth.
Olaitan said that a lot of children have been made to work under harmful conditions and for various reasons.
“An estimated 160 million children were subjected to child labour condition as at 2020, with 9 million additional children at the risk due to impact of COVID-19,” she said.
Charles Akpan, the ministry’s deputy director, press and public relations while welcoming participants to the workshop, pointed out that the idea of convening the workshop became necessary to create avenues for better partnership between the government and the media in conveying policies and programmes aimed at eliminating child labour in the country.
