Child Labour in Spotlight June 12

The Ministry of Labour and Social Security will collaborate with the Jamaica Employers’ Federation (JEF), to mark World Day Against Child Labour, on Sunday, June 12.

This year’s theme is: ‘End Child Labour in Supply Chains – It’s Everyone’s Business’.

The Ministry, JEF and the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions (JCTU) will partner with other key stakeholders in organising community and business sensitisation sessions, to help raise awareness of the issues, risks and impact of child labour and strategies to eliminate its occurrence in the domestic market and globally.

The community sensitisation session will be held on Sunday, June 26, while the business sensitisation session will be held on Wednesday, June 29.

Director of the Child Labour Unit in the Ministry, Marva Pringle-Ximinnies told JIS News that the community session will be held in Trench Town, Kingston, as that community has done significant work in uplifting its youth in the area of training and creating employment opportunities.

“They are actively engaged in encouraging young people to become a part of our business environment. They have entrepreneurial training to bring about wealth creation and employment for themselves while they continue to seek employment in a variety of areas,” she said.

On the matter of businesses employing children, Mrs. Pringle-Ximinnies said that this issue is mostly common in the informal sector and that the session will help to bring more awareness and vigilance among the business community in preventing the employment of children.

The Director noted that the sessions will provide the employers with guidelines that have been created by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Organisation of Employers.

“We will be giving them resources that they can rely on in the event that they need to be guided on the indicators and what they need to do to prevent children being engaged in child labour in the supply chain,” she said.

Globally, 168 million children are engaged in child labour in all supply chains, from agriculture to manufacturing services to construction.