The authorities in Kyotera district are concerned about the presence of illegal recruitment agents, saying they are responsible for the persistence of cases of child labour and cross-border human trafficking in the area.
The agents, according to authorities, operate in form of cartels spread out in nearby urban areas on either side of Mutukula- the Uganda-Tanzania border, where they link children to different people, who exploit them for casual labour.
Kyotera District Vice Chairperson Agnes Namusiitwa says that they are recording a spike in cases of child labour including children who are engaged in nasty jobs. She says that the problem is affecting children from Kyotera and Rakai districts and their counterparts from Tanzania.
She says that on a monthly average at least 12 children some as young as nine years are recruited by clandestine local brokers that operate within the communities, who eventually link them to employers on either side of the border. She explains that the victims are usually hired as hawkers, shop attendants, domestic workers, and in plantations while in worst-case scenarios, victims have been trafficked into commercial sex.
She explains that they have raised the matter with their Tanzanian counterparts through the cross-border security forums, but the efforts are yet to yield the preferred results which now require high-level bilateral intervention to jointly curb the vice.
James Kigozi, a resident of Kyotera Town ward blames the trend on high poverty levels, especially in the rural communities of the affected districts. According to him, some of the victims are found wandering in urban centres after dropping out of school, which exposes them to trafficking and eventually being hired as labourers to search for survival.
But Ignatius Ally Nuwoha, the Executive Director for African Network for Prevention against Child Abuse and Neglect-ANPPCAN; one of the non-government organizations that operate in Kyotera and Rakai districts says that their studies link the problem to the history of the HIV pandemic that left many child-headed families in the area in the early 1980s.
He adds that many children were circumstantially deprived and didn’t go to school after their parents died, and these have also given birth to second-generation descendants whom they can also not cater for, hence making them susceptible to violations.
Nuwoba says that they are working with the local Civil Society Organizations and local council leaders to sensitize communities about the dangers of child labour, an intervention he hopes will eliminate the problem.
Kyotera District Senior Labour Officer Deogratias Mukasa says that relevant departments are already engaging the police to conduct a joint operation to rescue victims, especially those engaged in dangerous works, to help reveal the brokers who sent them into employment.
For more click here
